The Daily Telegraph

170px Frontpage of The Daily Telegraph on 12 May 2010, the day after David Cameron became the British Prime Minister.
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	Telegraph Media Group
Editor	Tony Gallagher
Founded	1855
Political alignment	conservative[1]
Headquarters	111 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 0DT
Circulation	634,113 (July 2011)[2]
ISSN	0307-1235
OCLC number	49632006
Official website	telegraph.co.uk

The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet conservative-leaning newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in June 1855 as The Daily Telegraph and Courier, and since 2004 is owned by David and Frederick Barclay.

According to a MORI survey conducted in 2005, 64% of Telegraph readers intended to support the Conservative Party in the coming elections.^[3] It had an average daily circulation of 634,113 in July 2011 (compared to 441,205 for The Times).^[2]

It is the sister paper of The Sunday Telegraph. It is run separately with a different editorial staff, but there is some cross-usage of stories.

History[link]

Founding and early history (1855–1900)[link]

The Daily Telegraph and Courier was founded by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh in June 1855 to air a personal grievance against the future Commander-in-chief of the British Army, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge.^[1][4] Joseph Moses Levy, the owner of The Sunday Times, agreed to print the newspaper, and the first edition was published on 29 June 1855. The paper cost 2d and was four pages long.^[1] It was not a success, however, and Sleigh was unable to pay Levy the printing bill.^[4] Levy took over the newspaper, his aim being to produce a cheaper newspaper than his main competitors in London, the Daily News and The Morning Post, to expand the size of the overall market.^{[citation needed]}

Levy then appointed his son, Edward Levy-Lawson, and Thornton Leigh Hunt to edit the newspaper, and relaunched it as The Daily Telegraph, with the slogan "the largest, best, and cheapest newspaper in the world".^[5] Hunt laid out the newspaper's principles in a memorandum sent to Levy: "We should report all striking events in science, so told that the intelligent public can understand what has happened and can see its bearing on our daily life and our future. The same principle should apply to all other events—to fashion, to new inventions, to new methods of conducting business".^[6]

The first edition of the Daily Telegraph & Courier

In 1876 Jules Verne published his novel Michael Strogoff, whose plot takes place during a fictional uprising and war in Siberia. Verne included among the book's characters a war correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, named Harry Blount—who is depicted as an exceptionally dedicated, resourceful and brave journalist, taking great personal risks in order to follow closely the ongoing war and bring accurate news of it to the Telegraph's readership, ahead of competing papers.^[7]

In 1882 The Daily Telegraph moved to new Fleet Street premises, which were pictured in the Illustrated London News.

1900 to 1945[link]

In 1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany gave a controversial interview to The Daily Telegraph that severely damaged Anglo-German relations and added to international tensions in the build-up to World War I.^{[non-primary source needed][8]} In 1928 the son of the 1st Baron Burnham sold it to the 1st Viscount Camrose, in partnership with his brother Viscount Kemsley and the 1st Baron Iliffe. Both the Camrose (Berry) and Burnham (Levy-Lawson) families remained involved in management until Conrad Black took control in 1986.

In 1937 the newspaper absorbed The Morning Post which traditionally espoused a conservative position and sold predominantly amongst the retired officer class. Originally William Ewart Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose, bought The Morning Post with the intention of publishing it alongside The Daily Telegraph, but poor sales of the former led him to merge the two. For some years the paper was retitled The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post before it reverted to just The Daily Telegraph. In the late 1930s, Victor Gordon Lennox, The Telegraph's diplomatic editor published an anti-appeasement private newspaper The Whitehall Letter that received much of its information from leaks from Sir Robert Vansittart, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office and Reginald "Rex" Leeper, the Foreign Office's Press Secretary^[9] As an result, Gordon Lennox was monitored by MI5^[9]

In November 1940, with Fleet Street subjected to almost daily bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, The Telegraph started printing in Manchester at Kemsley House, which was run by Camrose's brother Kemsley. Manchester quite often printed the entire run of The Telegraph when its Fleet Street offices were under threat. The name Kemsley House was changed to Thomson House in 1959. In 1986 printing of Northern editions of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph moved to Trafford Park and in 2008 to Newsprinters at Knowsley, Liverpool.

During the Second World War, The Daily Telegraph covertly helped in the recruitment of code-breakers for Bletchley Park. The ability to solve The Telegraph's crossword in under 12 minutes was considered a recruitment test. The newspaper was asked to organise a crossword competition, after which each of the successful participants was contacted and asked if they would be prepared to undertake "a particular type of work as a contribution to the war effort". The competition itself was won by F H W Hawes of Dagenham who finished the crossword in less than eight minutes.^[10]

1945 to 2004[link]

This section requires expansion.

2004 to present[link]

The Daily Telegraph is owned by the Barclay brothers. Until January 2004, the Telegraph Group was controlled by Canadian businessman Conrad Black. Black, through his holding company Ravelston Corporation, owned Hollinger Inc. which in turn owned 30% of Hollinger International and, under a deal masterminded by Andrew Knight through which Black bought the Telegraph Group in 1986, owned 78% of the voting rights. Hollinger Inc. also owned the Chicago Sun-Times, and conservative publications such as The Spectator.

On 18 January 2004, Black was dismissed as chairman of the Hollinger International board over allegations of financial wrongdoing. Black was also sued by the company. Later that day it was reported that the Barclay brothers had agreed to purchase Hollinger Inc. from Black, giving them the controlling interest in the newspaper group. They then launched a takeover bid for the rest of the group, valuing the company at £200m. However, a suit has been filed by the Hollinger International board with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to try to block Black selling shares in the company until an investigation into his dealings have been completed. Black filed a counter-suit but eventually United States judge Leo Strine sided with the Hollinger International board and blocked Black from selling his Hollinger Inc. shares and interests to the twins. On Sunday 7 March, the twins announced they were launching another takeover bid, this time just for The Daily Telegraph and its Sunday sister paper rather than the whole stable. Current^[when?] owner of the Daily Express, Richard Desmond, was also interested in purchasing the paper, selling his interest in several pornographic magazines to finance the initiative. Desmond withdrew in March 2004 when the price climbed above £600m, as did Daily Mail and General Trust plc on 17 June.^{[citation needed]}

Eventually, the Barclay brothers purchased the Telegraph Group, and with it The Telegraph, for around £665m in late June 2004. Amidst the unravelling of the takeover Sir David Barclay suggested that The Daily Telegraph might in the future no longer be the "house newspaper" of the Conservatives. In an interview with The Guardian he said, "Where the government are right we shall support them." The editorial board endorsed the Conservative party in the 2005 general election. 15 November 2004 saw the tenth anniversary of the launch of The Telegraph's website Electronic Telegraph. Now re-launched as telegraph.co.uk, the website was the UK's first national newspaper online. Monday 8 May 2006 saw the first stage of a major redesign of The Telegraph's website, based on a wider page layout and greater prominence for audio, video and journalist blogs.

On 10 October 2005, The Daily Telegraph relaunched to incorporate a tabloid sports section and a new standalone business section. The Daily Mails' star columnist and political analyst Simon Heffer left that paper in October 2005 to rejoin The Daily Telegraph, where he has become associate editor. Heffer, known for his combative style and wit, has written two columns a week for The Telegraph since late October 2005 and is a regular contributor to the news podcast. November, 2005 – launches the first regular podcast service by a newspaper in the UK.^[11] Just before Christmas 2005, it was announced that the Telegraph titles will be moving from Canada Place in Canary Wharf, to Victoria Plaza near Victoria Station in central London.^[12] The new office features a 'hub and spoke' layout for the newsroom, which will produce content for print and online editions.

In October 2006, with its relocation to Buckingham Palace Road, Victoria, the Telegraph rebranded itself the Telegraph Media Group, repositioning itself as a multimedia company. On 2 September 2008, the Daily Telegraph was printed with colour on each page for the first time when it left Westferry for Newsprinters at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, another arm of the Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch) company.^[13] The paper is also printed in Liverpool and Glasgow by Newsprinters. In May 2009, the daily and Sunday editions published details of MPs' expenses. This led to a number of high-profile resignations from both the ruling Labour administration and the Conservative opposition.

Political stance[link]

The Daily Telegraph has been politically conservative in modern times.^[14] The personal links between the paper's editors and the leadership of the Conservative Party, along with the paper's influence over Conservative activists, has resulted in the paper commonly being referred to, especially in Private Eye, as the Torygraph.^[14] Even when Conservative support was shown to have slumped in the opinion polls and Labour became ascendant in them (particularly when leader Tony Blair rebranded the party as "New Labour" on becoming leader after the death of John Smith in 1994), the newspaper remained loyal to the Conservatives. This loyalty continued after Labour ousted the Conservatives from power by a landslide election result in 1997, and in the face of Labour election wins in 2001 and the third successive Labour election win in 2005.

Sister publications[link]

[edit] The Sunday Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph's sister Sunday paper was founded in 1961. The writer Sir Peregrine Worsthorne is probably the best known journalist associated with the title (1961–97), eventually being editor for three years from 1986. In 1989 the Sunday title was briefly merged in to a seven-day operation under Max Hastings's overall control. In 2005 the paper was revamped, a glossy fashion magazine being added to the more traditional review section. It costs £2.00 and includes separate Money, Home and Living, Sport, Travel and Business supplements. Circulation of The Sunday Telegraph in July 2010 was 505,214 (ABC)

[edit] The Young Telegraph

The Young Telegraph was a weekly section of The Daily Telegraph published as a 14-page supplement in the weekend edition of the newspaper. The Young Telegraph featured a mixture of news, features, cartoon strips and product reviews aimed at 8–12 year olds. It was edited by Damien Kelleher (1993–97) and Kitty Melrose (1997–1999). Launched in 1990, the award-winning supplement also ran original serialised stories featuring popular brands such as Young Indiana Jones and the British children's sitcom Maid Marian and her Merry Men. In 1995, an interactive spin-off called Electronic Young Telegraph was launched on floppy disk. Described as an interactive computer magazine for children, Electronic Young Telegraph was edited by Adam Tanswell, who led the re-launch of the product on CD-Rom in 1998.^[15] Electronic Young Telegraph featured original content including interactive quizzes, informative features and computer games, as well as entertainment news and reviews. It was later re-branded as T:Drive in 1999.

Website[link]

Telegraph.co.uk is the online version of the newspaper. It includes articles from the print editions of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, as well as web-only content such as breaking news, features, picture galleries and blogs. It was named UK Consumer Website of the Year in 2007^[16] and Digital Publisher of the year in 2009^[17] by the Association of Online Publishers.^[18] The site is overseen by Edward Roussel, digital editor of Telegraph Media Group. Other staff include Shane Richmond, head of technology (editorial),^[19]and Ian Douglas, head of digital production^[20]. The site, which has been the focus of the group's efforts to create an integrated news operation producing content for print and online from the same newsroom, completed a relaunch during 2008 involving the use of the Escenic content management system, popular among northern European and Scandinavian newspaper groups. Telegraph TV is an Online Video on Demand Television service run by The Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. It is hosted on The Telegraph's official website, telegraph.co.uk.

Telegraph.co.uk became the most popular UK newspaper site in April 2008.^[21] It was overtaken by Guardian.co.uk in April 2009 and later by "Mail Online".^[22] As of Decemeber 2010, "Telegraph.co.uk" is now the third most visited British newspaper website with 1.7 million daily browsers compared to 2.3 million for "Guardian.co.uk" and nearly 3 million for "Mail Online".^[23] 8% of the Telegraph's traffic comes from social media sites,^[24] much more than for any other site.^[25] Part of this is down to its success with the Digg widget.^[26]

History[link]

The website was launched, under the name electronic telegraph at midday on 15 November 1994 at the headquarters of The Daily Telegraph at Canary Wharf in London Docklands. It was Europe's first daily web-based newspaper. Initially the site published only the top stories from the print edition of the newspaper but it gradually increased its coverage until virtually all of the newspaper was carried online and the website was also publishing original material. The website, hosted on a Sun Microsystems Sparc 20 server and connected via a 64 kbit/s leased line from Demon Internet, was edited by Ben Rooney. Key personnel behind the launch of the site were Matthew Doull and Saul Klein and the then marketing manager of The Daily Telegraph, Hugo Drayton, and the webmaster Fiona Carter. Drayton later became managing director of the newspaper.

An early coup for the site was the publication of articles by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on Bill Clinton and the Whitewater controversy. The availability of the articles online brought a large American audience to the site. In 1997, the Clinton administration issued a 331-page report that accused Evans-Pritchard of peddling "right-wing inventions". Derek Bishton, who by then had succeeded Rooney as editor, later wrote: "In the days before ET it would have been highly unlikely that anyone in the US would have been aware of Evans-Pritchard's work – and certainly not to the extent that the White House would be forced to issue such a lengthy rebuttal."^[27] Bishton, who is now^[when?] consulting editor for Telegraph Media Group, was followed as editor by Richard Burton, who was made redundant in August 2006. Edward Roussel replaced Burton.

My Telegraph[link]

My Telegraph offers a platform for readers to have their own blog, save articles, and network with other readers. Launched in May 2007, My Telegraph won a Cross Media Award from international newspaper organisation Ifra in October 2007.^[28] One of the judges, Robert Cauthorn, described the project as "the best deployment of blogging yet seen in any newspaper anywhere in the world".

Notable stories[link]

In May 2009 the daily and Sunday editions published details of MPs' expenses. This led to a number of high-profile resignations from both the ruling Labour administration and the Conservative opposition.

In December 2010 Telegraph reporters posing as constituents secretly recorded Business Secretary Vince Cable. In an undisclosed part of the transcript given to the BBC's Robert Peston by a whistleblower unhappy that the Telegraph had not published Cable's comments in full, Cable stated in reference to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation takeover bid for BSkyB, "I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win."^[29] Following this revelation Cable had his responsibility for media affairs – including ruling on Murdoch's takeover plans – withdrawn from his role as business secretary.^[30] In May 2011 the Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint regarding the Telegraph's use of subterfuge: "On this occasion, the commission was not convinced that the public interest was such as to justify proportionately this level of subterfuge."^[31] In July 2011 a firm of private investigators hired by the Telegraph to track the source of the leak concluded "strong suspicion" that two former Telegraph employees who had moved to News International, one of them Will Lewis, had gained access to the transcript and audio files and leaked them to Peston.^[32]

Notable mistakes[link]

The Daily Telegraph has published at least five premature obituaries:

• Cockie Hoogterp, the second wife of Baron Blixen, in 1938 after the Baron's third wife died in a car accident. Mrs. Hoogterp sent all her bills back marked "Deceased" and survived her premature obituary by over 50 years.^[33]
• Dave Swarbrick in 1999, prompting much embarrassing publicity for the newspaper, and Swarbrick's remark "It's not the first time I have died in Coventry."^[33]
• Dorothy Southworth Ritter, the widow of Tex Ritter and mother of John Ritter, in August 2001.^[33] She eventually died in 2003, two months after her son's death.
• Ballet dancer Katharine Sergava in 2003, which also caused The New York Times to print an erroneous obituary based on The Telegraph's.^[34]
• Iraqi Defence and Interior Minister Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali", who was widely reported to have been killed in April 2003.^[35]

On Wednesday, 24 February 1988, The Daily Telegraph was printed with the wrong date: Thursday 25 February was printed by mistake. This caused complaints from confused readers, but also inspired the first front page cartoon by Matt Pritchett, who now^[when?] has a cartoon on the front page of the Telegraph almost every day. The cartoon had the caption: "I hope I have a better Thursday than I did yesterday".

Awards[link]

At the 2010 British Press Awards The Telegraph was named the "National Newspaper of the Year" for its coverage of the MPs expenses scandal (named "Scoop of the Year"), with William Lewis winning "Journalist of the Year".^[36] The Telegraph won "Team of the Year" in 2004 for its coverage of the Iraq War.^[36] The paper also won "Columnist of the Year" three years' running from 2002 to 2004: Zoë Heller (2002), Robert Harris (2003) and Boris Johnson (2004).^[36]

Charity and fundraising work[link]

In 1979, following a letter in The Daily Telegraph and a Government report highlighting the shortfall in care available for premature babies, Bliss, the special care baby charity was founded. In 2009, as part of the Bliss' 30th birthday celebrations, the charity was chosen as one of four beneficiaries of the newspaper's Christmas Charity Appeal. In February 2010 a cheque was presented to Bliss for £120,000.

The newspaper runs a charity appeal every Christmas, choosing different charities each year. In 2009, £1.2 million was raised.

Editors[link]

1855: Thornton Leigh Hunt

1873: Edwin Arnold

1888: John le Sage

1923: Fred Miller

1924: Arthur Watson

1950: Colin Coote

1964: Maurice Green

1974: Bill Deedes

1986: Max Hastings

1995: Charles Moore

2003: Martin Newland

2005: John Bryant

2007: William Lewis

2009: Tony Gallagher

See also[link]

• Sunday Telegraph

• Katharine Birbalsingh, columnist
• Simon Heffer, former columnist
• Anthony Loyd, one-time war correspondent
• J. H. B. Peel, columnist
• Mark Steyn, former columnist
• Auberon Waugh, a previous columnist
• Peter Simple, the pseudonym of Michael Wharton, who wrote a humorous column in the paper from 1957 to 2006.

Notes and references[link]

Further reading[link]

• The House The Berrys Built by Duff Hart-Davis. Concerns the history of The Daily Telegraph' from its inception to 1986. Illustrated with references and illustrations of William Ewart Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose (later called Lord Camrose).
• William Camrose: Giant of Fleet Street by his son Lord Hartwell. Illustrated biography with black-and-white photographic plates and includes an index. Concerns his links with The Daily Telegraph.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Daily Telegraph

• Telegraph.co.uk
• The digital edition of The Telegraph
• Leaping into the future at the Telegraph's Camelot – from The Guardian
• The Guardian: The plight of Hollinger
• BBC: Telegraph empire in tycoons' grip – 18 Jan 2004
• 'Daily Telegraph "will not be the house organ of the Conservatives"' – from BBC News Online
• The continuing takeover saga – from BBC News 7 March 2004
• Plunkett, John (21 November 2007). "Telegraph 'told to spike Blunkett story'". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/nov/21/dailytelegraph.telegraphmediagroup?gusrc=rss&feed=media. 
• Russia Now on The Daily Telegraph, produced by Russia Beyond the Headlines

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Helen Mirren
Mirren at the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011.
Born	Helen Lydia Mironoff (1945-07-26) 26 July 1945 (age 66) Chiswick, Middlesex, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1965–present
Spouse	Taylor Hackford (1997–present)
Partner	Taylor Hackford (1986–1997)
Website
Official site

Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.

Early life and family[link]

Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff^[1][2] in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Chiswick, West London.^[3] Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov (1913–1980), was of Russian origin, and her mother, Kitty (née Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda Rogers; 1909–1996), was English.^[4] Mirren's paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Tsarist Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He later became a diplomat, and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain, when he and his family were stranded during the Russian Revolution.^[5] The former diplomat became a London cab driver to support his family.

His son, Helen Mirren's father, changed the family name to the Scottish-sounding Mirren in the 1950s and became known as Basil Mirren. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II, and later drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner, before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. Mirren's mother was from West Ham, East London, and was the 13th of 14 children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria.^[4] Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist".^[6]

The first house she remembers living in was in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, when she was two or three years old, after the birth of her younger brother, who was named Peter Basil after his grandfather and great-great-grandfather. Mirren was the second of three children, born two years after her older sister Katherine ("Kate"; born 1942). She later lived in Leigh-on-Sea.

Education[link]

Mirren attended St Bernard's High School for Girls in Southend-on-Sea, where she acted in school productions, and subsequently a teaching college, the New College of Speech and Drama in London, "housed within Anna Pavlova's old home, Ivy House" on the North End Road – which leads from Golders Green to Hampstead, N. London. At age eighteen, she auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and was accepted. By the time she was 20, she was Cleopatra in the NYT production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Old Vic, which led to her signing with the agent Al Parker.^[7]

Theatre[link]

Early years[link]

Her work for the NYT led to Mirren joining the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), playing Castiza in Trevor Nunn's 1966 staging of The Revenger's Tragedy, Diana in All's Well That Ends Well in 1967, Cressida in Troilus and Cressida and Phebe^[8] in As You Like It in 1968, Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona in 1970, and Tatiana in Gorky's Enemies at the Aldwych and the title role in Miss Julie at The Other Place in 1971. She also appeared in four productions, directed by Braham Murray for Century Theatre at the University Theatre in Manchester between 1965 and 1967.^[9]

In 1970 Director/producer John Goldschmidt made the documentary film Doing Her Own Thing about Mirren at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The film was made for ATV and shown on the ITV Network in the UK.

In 1972–73 Mirren worked with Peter Brook's International Centre for Theatre Research, and joined the group's tour in North Africa and the US which created The Conference of the Birds. Returning to the RSC she played Lady Macbeth at Stratford in 1974 and at the Aldwych Theatre in 1975.

As reported by Sally Beauman in her 1982 history of the RSC, Mirren, while appearing in Nunn's Macbeth (1974) and in a highly publicised letter to The Guardian newspaper, attacked both the National Theatre and the RSC for their lavish production expenditure, declaring it "unnecessary and destructive to the art of the Theatre," and adding, "The realms of truth, emotion and imagination reached for in acting a great play have become more and more remote, often totally unreachable across an abyss of costume and technicalities..." There were no discernible repercussions for this rebuke of the RSC.^[10]

West End and RSC[link]

At the Royal Court in September 1975 she notably played rock star Maggie in Teeth 'n' Smiles, a musical play by David Hare, which was revived at Wyndham's Theatre in May 1976 winning her the Plays & Players Best Actress award, voted by the London critics.

From November 1975 Mirren played in West End repertory with the Lyric Theatre Company as Nina in The Seagull and Ella in Ben Travers' new farce The Bed Before Yesterday ("Mirren is stirringly voluptuous as the Harlowesque good-time girl": Michael Billington, The Guardian, 10 December 1975). At the RSC in Stratford in 1977, and at the Aldwych the following year, she played a steely Queen Margaret in Terry Hands' production of the three parts of Henry VI, while 1979 saw her 'bursting with grace' with an acclaimed performance as Isabella in Peter Gill's otherwise unexceptional production of Measure for Measure at Riverside Studios.

In 1981 she returned to the Royal Court for the London premiere of Brian Friel's Faith Healer. In the same year she also received acclaim for her performance in the title role of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, a production of Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre which transferred to The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London. Reviewing her portrayal for The Sunday Telegraph, Francis King wrote: "Miss Mirren never leaves it in doubt that even in her absences, this ardent, beautiful woman is the most important character of the story."

Her performance as Moll Cutpurse in The Roaring Girl at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in January 1983, and at the Barbican Theatre April 1983), "swaggered through the action with radiant singularity of purpose, filling in areas of light and shade that even Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker omitted." – Michael Coveney, Financial Times, April 1983.

After a relatively barren sojourn in the Hollywood Hills, she returned to England at the beginning of 1989 to co-star with Bob Peck at the Young Vic in the London premiere of the Arthur Miller double-bill, Two Way Mirror, performances which prompted Miller to remark: "What is so good about English actors is that they are not afraid of the open expression of large emotions" (interview by Sheridan Morley: The Times 11 January 1989). In Elegy for a Lady she played the svelte proprietress of a classy boutique, while as the blonde hooker in Some Kind of Love Story she was "clad in a Freudian slip and shifting easily from waif-like vulnerability to sexual aggression, giving the role a breathy Monroesque quality" (Michael Billington, The Guardian).

Broadway debut[link]

A further stage breakthrough came in 1994, in an Yvonne Arnaud Theatre production bound for the West End, when Bill Bryden cast her as Natalya Petrovna in Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country. Her co-stars were John Hurt as her aimless lover Rakitin and Joseph Fiennes in only his second professional stage appearance as the cocksure young tutor Belyaev. "Instead of a bored Natalya fretting the summer away in dull frocks, Mirren, dazzlingly gowned, is a woman almost wilfully allowing her heart's desire for her son's young tutor to rule her head and wreak domestic havoc....Creamy shoulders bared, she feels free to launch into a gloriously enchanted, dreamily comic self-confession of love." (John Thaxter, Richmond & Twickenham Times, 4 March 1994).

Mirren was twice nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actress (Play): in 1995 for her Broadway debut in A Month in the Country, now directed by Scott Ellis ("Miss Mirren's performance is bigger and more animated than the one she gave last year in an entirely different London production", Vincent Canby in the NY Times, 26 April 1995). Then again in 2002 for August Strindberg's Dance of Death, co-starring with Sir Ian McKellen, their fraught rehearsal period coinciding with the terrorist attacks on New York on September 11, 2001 (as recorded in her In the Frame autobiography, September 2007).

National Theatre[link]

Mirren had an unhappy experience at the National Theatre in 1998 when she played Cleopatra to Alan Rickman's Antony. In 2000 Nicholas Hytner, who had worked with Mirren on the film version of The Madness of King George, cast her as Lady Torrance in his revival of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Michael Billington, reviewing for The Guardian, described her performance as "an exemplary study of an immigrant woman who has acquired a patina of resilient toughness but who slowly acknowledges her sensuality."

At the National Theatre in November 2003 she again won praise playing Christine Mannon ("defiantly cool, camp and skittish", Evening Standard; "glows with mature sexual allure", Daily Telegraph) in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra directed by Howard Davies.

“This production was one of the best experiences of my professional life, The play was four and a half hours long, and I have never known that kind of response from an audience ... It was the serendipity of a beautifully cast play, with great design and direction, It will be hard to be in anything better.” (In the Frame, September 2007).

She played the tragic title role in Jean Racine's Phèdre at the National in 2009, in a production directed by Nicholas Hytner. The production was also staged at the amphitheater of Epidaurus on 11 and 12 July 2009.

Selected stage credits[link]

• Cleopatra, Anthony and Cleopatra, Old Vic Theatre, London, 1965
• Cathleen, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Century Theatre, Manchester,England 1965
• Kitty, Charley's Aunt, Century Theatre, Manchester, 1967
• Nerissa, The Merchant of Venice, Century Theatre,Manchester, 1967
• Castiza, The Revenger's Tragedy, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, 1967
• Diana, All's Well That Ends Well, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1967
• Cressida, Troilus and Cressida, Royal Shakespeare Company, Aldwych Theatre, London, 1968
• Hero, Much Ado about Nothing, Aldwych Theatre, 1968–1969
• Win-the-Fight Littlewit, Bartholomew Fair, Aldwych Theatre, 1969
• Lady Anne, Richard III, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1970
• Ophelia, Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1970
• Julia, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1970
• Tatyana, Enemies, Royal Shakespeare Company, Aldwych Theatre, 1971
• Harriet, The Man of Mode, Royal Shakespeare Company, Aldwych Theatre, 1971
• Title role, Miss Julie, Royal Shakespeare Company, Aldwych Theatre, 1971
• Elayne, The Balcony, Royal Shakespeare Company, Aldwych Theatre, 1971
• Isabella, Measure for Measure, Riverside Studios Theatre, London,1974
• Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1974, then Aldwych Theatre, 1975
• Maggie, Teeth 'n' Smiles, Royal Court Theatre, London, 1975, then Wyndham's Theatre, London, 1976
• Nina, The Seagull, Lyric Theatre, London, 1975
• Ella, The Bed before Yesterday, Lyric Theatre, 1975
• Queen Margaret, Henry VI, Parts I, II and III, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1977, then Aldwych Theatre, 1978
• Title role, The Duchess of Malfi, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, England, 1980, then The Roundhouse, London, 1981
• Grace, Faith Healer, Royal Court Theatre, 1981
• Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra, Pit Theatre, London, 1983
• Moll Cutpurse, The Roaring Girl, Barbican Theatre, London, 1983
• Marjorie, Extremities, Duchess Theatre, London, 1984
• Madame Bovary, 1987
• Angela, "Some Kind of Love Story," and dying woman, "Elegy for a Lady," in Two-Way Mirror (double-bill), Young Vic Theatre, *London, 1989
• Sex Please We're Italian, 1991
• Natalya Petrovna, A Month in the Country, London, 1994, then Criterion Theatre, New York City, 1995
• Antony and Cleopatra, Royal National Theatre, London, 1998
• Collected Stories, London, 1999
• Lady Torrance, Orpheus Descending, Donmar Warehouse, London, 2000
• Alice, Dance of Death, Broadhurst Theatre, New York City, 2001–2002
• Mourning Becomes Electra, Lyttelton Stage, Royal National Theatre, 2003
• Phedre, National Theatre, 2009
• Also appeared as Susie Monmican, The Silver Lassie; in Woman in Mind, Los Angeles.

Film[link]

Mirren at the 2010 Comic Con in San Diego, 22 July 2010

Mirren has also appeared in a large number of films throughout her career. Some of her earlier film roles include Age of Consent, O Lucky Man!, Caligula, Excalibur, 2010, The Long Good Friday, White Nights, When the Whales Came and The Mosquito Coast. She appeared in Some Mother's Son, Painted Lady, The Prince of Egypt and The Madness of King George. One of her other film roles was in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, as the eponymous thief's wife, opposite Michael Gambon. Her favourite film is Teaching Mrs. Tingle, in which she plays sadistic History teacher, Mrs Eve Tingle.^{[citation needed]}

Mirren continued her successful film career when she starred more recently in Gosford Park with Maggie Smith and Calendar Girls where she starred with Julie Walters. Other more recent appearances include The Clearing, Pride, Raising Helen, and Shadowboxer. Mirren also provided the voice for the supercomputer "Deep Thought" in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. During her career, she has portrayed three British queens in different films and television series: Elizabeth I in the television series Elizabeth I (2005), Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006), and Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, in The Madness of King George (1994). She is the only actress ever to have portrayed both Queens Elizabeth on the screen.

Mirren's title role of The Queen earned her numerous acting awards including a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award, among many others. During her acceptance speech at the Academy Award ceremony, she praised and thanked Elizabeth II and stated that she had maintained her dignity and weathered many storms during her reign as Queen. Mirren later appeared in supporting roles in the films National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, Inkheart, State of Play, and The Last Station, for which she was nominated for an Oscar.^[11]