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Sir Antony Sher, KBE (born 14 June 1949) is a double Olivier Award winning South African-born British actor, writer, theatre director and painter.

Early years[link]

Sher was born into a Lithuanian Jewish family in Cape Town, South Africa, the son of Margery and Emmanuel Sher, who worked in business.^[1] He grew up in the suburb of Sea Point and is a cousin of the playwright Ronald Harwood. Sher, however, has worked mainly in the United Kingdom and is now a British citizen.

In 1968, after completing his compulsory military service, he left for London to audition at the Central School of Speech and Drama and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but was unsuccessful. Instead, he studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art from 1969 to 1971. After training, and some early performances with the theatre group Gay Sweatshop, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982.

Career[link]

In the 1970s Sher was part of an astonishing group of young actors and writers working at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. ^[2] It consisted of the likes of writers Willy Russell and Alan Bleasdale and fellow actors Bernard Hill, Julie Walters, Trevor Eve and Jonathan Pryce. Sher summed up the work of the company with the phrase "Anarchy ruled." At the Royal Shakespeare Company he took the title role in Tartuffe and played the Fool in King Lear before his big breakthrough in 1984, when he played the title role in Shakespeare's Richard III. This won him the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award. Since then he has played the lead in such productions as Tamburlaine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Stanley and Macbeth. He also played Johnnie in Athol Fugard's Hello and Goodbye, Iago in Othello, Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.

Antony has appeared in some films, including Yanks, Superman II, Shadey, Erik the Viking. In the 1996 film adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, Sher starred as the Chief Weasel. He won his second Laurence Olivier Award in 1997 for his performance as Stanley Spencer in Stanley. Sher played the role of the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in the 1997 film Mrs Brown about Queen Victoria's relationship with John Brown. In television, he starred in the miniseries The History Man (1981) and The Jury (2002). In 2003 he played the central character in an adaptation of the J. G. Ballard short story, "The Enormous Space", filmed as Home and broadcast on BBC Four. In the ITV television series Hornblower (1999) he played the role of the French royalist Colonel de Moncoutant, marquis de Muzillac in Episode 4 The Frogs and the Lobsters. Recent cinema credits include a cameo in the British comedy Three and Out released on 25 April 2008 and the role of Akiba in the acclaimed television play God on Trial.

In 2011 Sher appeared in the BBC series The Shadow Line portraying the role of Glickman.^[3]

Other work[link]

Sher's books include the memoirs: Woza Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus in South Africa, with Gregory Doran (1997); Year of the King (1985); Beside Myself (2002); Characters (1990); and Primo Time (2005). He also wrote the novels Middlepost (1989), Cheap Lives (1995), The Indoor Boy (1996), and The Feast (1999).

Sher wrote several plays, including ID (2003) and Primo (2004). The latter was adapted for the screen in 2005. In 2008 The Giant, the first of his plays in which Sher did not feature, was performed at the Hampstead Theatre. The main characters are: Michelangelo at the time of his creation of David; Leonardo da Vinci; and Vito, their mutual apprentice.

In 2005 Sher directed Breakfast With Mugabe at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, which transferred to the Soho Theatre (in April 2006) and the Duchess Theatre (May 2006).

In 2007 he made a Channel 4 crime documentary, Murder Most Foul, about his native South Africa.^[4] The documentary examines the gruesome double murder of actor Brett Goldin and fashion designer Richard Bloom.

Personal life[link]

In 2005, he and his companion, the director Gregory Doran with whom he frequently collaborates professionally, became one of the first gay couples to form a civil partnership in Britain.^[5] In 2002, they became vegetarians.^{[citation needed]}

Stage productions[link]

• 1972–74: Plays various roles at the Liverpool Everyman
• 1974: Played Ringo Starr in Willy Russell's 'John Paul George Ringo and Bert' at Liverpool's Everyman Theatre where it opened in May 1974. The production transferred to the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London in August 1974.
• 1982: Mike Leigh's Goosepimples in the West End
• 1982: King Lear (as the Fool) at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (transferring to the Barbican in 1983)
• 1984: Richard III with the RSC (transferred to the Barbican in 1985)
• 1985 Torch Song Trilogy Albery Theatre 1 October for seven months.
• 1987: Shylock in The Merchant of Venice for the RSC
• 1987: Henry Irving in Happy Birthday, Sir Larry on 31 May at the National Theatre (a Laurence Olivier 80th birthday tribute)
• 1990: Singer for the RSC
• 1991: The Trial and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui for the National Theatre
• 1994/5: Titus Andronicus at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, then transferring to the National and a UK tour.
• 1997: Stanley at the National Theatre
• 1998/1999: The Winter's Tale, at the Barbican Theatre with the Royal Shakespeare Company
• 1999: Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
• 2000/1: Macbeth and The Winter's Tale for the RSC
• 2002: RSC's Jacobean season transfers to the West End
• 2003: I.D. at the Almeida Theatre, London in September
• 2004: Primo at the Cottesloe – National Theatre in October
• 2007: Kean in Kean at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford (then transferring to the Apollo Theatre, London in May) in March
• 2008: Prospero in The Tempest at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town; Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; and tour of Richmond, Leeds, Bath, Nottingham, Sheffield
• 2010: Tomas Stockmann in An Enemy of the People at the Sheffield Crucible

Television[link]

• 2011: The Shadow Line episodes 5 and 6. Made for BBC Two by Hugo Blick.

Honours and awards[link]

• 1985: Laurence Olivier Award for best actor, for Richard III
• 1985: Evening Standard Award for best actor, for Richard III
• 1997: Laurence Olivier Award for best actor in a play, for Stanley
• 1998: Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Liverpool University.
• 2000: Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) for services to theatre
• 2006: Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for Primo
• 2007: Honorary Doctorate of Letters from University of Warwick
• 2010: Honorary Doctorate of Letters from University of Cape Town

References[link]

External links[link]

• Antony Sher at the Internet Broadway Database
• Antony Sher at the Internet Movie Database
• The Spectator article

The Right Honourable The Earl of Beaconsfield KG PC FRS
Disraeli in 1878
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 20 February 1874 – 21 April 1880
Monarch	Victoria
Preceded by	William Ewart Gladstone
Succeeded by	William Ewart Gladstone
In office 27 February 1868 – 1 December 1868
Monarch	Victoria
Preceded by	The Earl of Derby
Succeeded by	William Ewart Gladstone
Leader of the Opposition
In office 1 December 1868 – 17 February 1874
Monarch	Victoria
Preceded by	William Ewart Gladstone
Succeeded by	William Ewart Gladstone
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 6 July 1866 – 29 February 1868
Preceded by	William Ewart Gladstone
Succeeded by	George Ward Hunt
In office 26 February 1858 – 11 June 1859
Preceded by	Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bt.
Succeeded by	William Ewart Gladstone
In office 27 February 1852 – 17 December 1852
Preceded by	Charles Wood
Succeeded by	William Ewart Gladstone
Personal details
Born	(1804-12-21)21 December 1804 London, England, UK
Died	19 April 1881(1881-04-19) (aged 76) London, England
Political party	Conservative
Spouse(s)	Mary Anne Lewis
Religion	Church of England (for most of his life) Judaism (until age 13)
Signature

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS, (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. He served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Although his father had him baptised to Anglicanism at age 12, he was nonetheless Britain's first and thus far only Prime Minister who was born into a Jewish family—originally from Portugal.^[1] He played an instrumental role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party after the Corn Laws schism of 1846.

Although he was a major figure in the protectionist wing of the Conservative Party after 1844, Disraeli's relations with the other leading figures in the party, particularly Lord Derby, the overall leader, were often strained. Not until the 1860s would Derby and Disraeli be on easy terms, and the latter's succession of the former assured. From 1852 onwards, Disraeli's career would also be marked by his often intense rivalry with William Ewart Gladstone, who eventually rose to become leader of the Liberal Party. In this feud, Disraeli was aided by his warm friendship with Queen Victoria, who came to detest Gladstone during the latter's first premiership in the 1870s. In 1876 Disraeli was raised to the peerage as the Earl of Beaconsfield, capping nearly four decades in the House of Commons.

Before and during his political career, Disraeli was well known as a literary and social figure, although his novels are not generally regarded as a part of the Victorian literary canon. He mainly wrote romances, of which Sybil and Vivian Grey are perhaps the best-known today. He is exceptional among British Prime Ministers for having gained equal social and political renown. He was twice successful as the Glasgow University Conservative Association's candidate for Rector of the University, holding the post for two full terms between 1871 and 1877.

Early life[link]

He claimed Portuguese ancestry, possibly referring to an earlier origin of his family heritage in Iberia prior to the expulsion of Jews in 1492. After this event many Jews emigrated, in two waves; some fled to the Muslim lands of the Ottoman Empire, but many also went to Christian Europe, first to northern Italy, then to the Netherlands, and later to England.^[2] One modern historian has seen him as essentially a marrano.^[3][4]

He was the second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria Basevi. Benjamin changed the spelling in the 1820s by dropping the apostrophe.^[5] His siblings included Sarah (1802–1859), Naphtali (1807), Ralph (1809–1898), and James (1813–1868).^[6] Benjamin at first attended a small school, the Reverend John Potticary's school at Blackheath.^[7] His father had Benjamin baptised in July 1817 following a dispute with their synagogue. The elder D'Israeli was content to remain outside organised religion. From 1817, Benjamin attended a school at Higham Hill, in Walthamstow, under Eliezer Cogan.^[8] His younger brothers, in contrast, attended the superior Winchester College.^[9]

Isaac D'Israeli, father of Benjamin Disraeli

His father groomed him for a career in law, and Disraeli was articled to a solicitor in 1821. In 1824, Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father and later wrote that it was while travelling on the Rhine that he decided to abandon the law: "I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer."^[10] He visited the towns of Oppenheim and Speyer, both of which have notable Jewish communities. On his return to England he speculated on the stock exchange on various South American mining companies. The recognition of the new South American republics on the recommendation of George Canning had led to a considerable boom, encouraged by various promoters. In this connection, Disraeli became involved with the financier J. D. Powles, one such booster. In the course of 1825, Disraeli wrote three anonymous pamphlets for Powles, promoting the companies.^[11]

That same year Disraeli's financial activities brought him into contact with the publisher John Murray who was also involved in the South American mines. Accordingly, they attempted to bring out a newspaper, The Representative, to promote both the cause of the mines and those politicians who supported the mines, specifically George Canning. The paper was a failure, in part because the mining "bubble" burst in late 1825, which ruined Powles and Disraeli. Also, according to Disraeli's biographer, Lord Blake, the paper was "atrociously edited", and would have failed regardless. Disraeli's debts incurred from this debacle would haunt him for the rest of his life.^[12]

Before he entered parliament, Disraeli was involved with several women, most notably Henrietta, Lady Sykes (the wife of Sir Francis Sykes, 3rd Bt), who served as the model for Henrietta Temple. It was Henrietta who introduced Disraeli to Lord Lyndhurst, with whom she later became romantically involved. As Lord Blake observed: "The true relationship between the three cannot be determined with certainty ... there can be no doubt that the affair [figurative usage] damaged Disraeli and that it made its contribution, along with many other episodes, to the understandable aura of distrust which hung around his name for so many years."^[13]

In 1839 he settled his private life by marrying Mary Anne Lewis, the rich widow of Wyndham Lewis, Disraeli's erstwhile colleague at Maidstone. Mary Lewis was 12 years his senior, and their union was seen as being based on financial interests, but they came to cherish one another.^[14]

Literary career[link]

Disraeli turned towards literature after his financial disaster, motivated in part by a desperate need for money, and brought out his first novel, Vivian Grey, in 1826. Disraeli's biographers agree that Vivian Grey was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of The Representative, and it proved very popular on its release, although it also caused much offence within the Tory literary world when Disraeli's authorship was discovered. The book, initially anonymous, was purportedly written by a "man of fashion" – someone who moved in high society. Disraeli, then just twenty-three, did not move in high society, and the numerous solecisms present in his otherwise brilliant and daring work made this painfully obvious. Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. Furthermore, John Murray believed that Disraeli had caricatured him and abused his confidence–an accusation denied at the time, and by the official biography, although subsequent biographers (notably Blake) have sided with Murray.^[15]

A Young Disraeli
by Sir Francis Grant, 1852

After producing a Vindication of the English Constitution,^[16] and some political pamphlets, Disraeli followed up Vivian Grey with a series of novels, The Young Duke (1831), Contarini Fleming (1832), Alroy (1833), Venetia and Henrietta Temple (1837). During the same period he had also written The Revolutionary Epick and three burlesques, Ixion, The Infernal Marriage, and Popanilla. Of these only Henrietta Temple (based on his affair with Henrietta Sykes, wife of Sir Francis William Sykes, 3rd Bt) was a true success.^[17]

During the 1840s Disraeli wrote three political novels collectively known as "the Trilogy"–Sybil, Coningsby, and Tancred.^[18]

Disraeli's relationships with other male writers of his period were strained or non-existent. After the disaster of The Representative, John Gibson Lockhart became a bitter enemy and the two never reconciled.^[19] Disraeli's preference for female company prevented the development of contact with those who were otherwise not alienated by his opinions, comportment or background. One contemporary who tried to bridge the gap, William Makepeace Thackeray, established a tentative cordial relationship in the late 1840s only to see everything collapse when Disraeli took offence at a burlesque of him which Thackeray penned for Punch. Disraeli took revenge in Endymion (published in 1880), when he caricatured Thackeray as "St. Barbe".^[20]

Disraeli's writing is generally interesting, and his books teem with striking thoughts, shrewd maxims, and brilliant phrases which stick in the memory; on the other hand, he is often artificial, extravagant, and turgid. Critic William Kuhn argued that much of his fiction can be read as "the memoirs he never wrote", revealing the inner life of a politician for whom the norms of Victorian public life appeared to represent a social straitjacket – particularly with regard to his allegedly "ambiguous sexuality."^[21]

Parliament[link]

Lord John Manners, friend of Disraeli, and leading figure in the Young England movement

Disraeli had been considering a political career as early as 1830, before he departed England for the Mediterranean. His first real efforts, however, did not come until 1832, during the great crisis over the Reform Bill, when he contributed to an anti-Whig pamphlet edited by John Wilson Croker and published by Murray entitled England and France: or a cure for Ministerial Gallomania. The choice of a Tory publication was regarded as odd by Disraeli's friends and relatives, who thought him more of a Radical. Indeed, Disraeli had objected to Murray about Croker inserting "high Tory" sentiment, writing that "it is quite impossible that anything adverse to the general measure of Reform can issue from my pen." Further, at the time Gallomania was published, Disraeli was in fact electioneering in High Wycombe in the Radical interest.^[22] Disraeli's politics at the time were influenced both by his rebellious streak and by his desire to make his mark. In the early 1830s the Tories and the interests they represented appeared to be a lost cause. The other great party, the Whigs, was anathema to Disraeli: "Toryism is worn out & I cannot condescend to be a Whig."^[23]

Though he initially stood for election, unsuccessfully, as a Radical, Disraeli was a Tory by the time he won a seat in the House of Commons in 1837 representing the constituency of Maidstone.^[24]

Although a Conservative, Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the demands of the Chartists and argued for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new industrialists in the middle class, helping to found the Young England group in 1842 to promote the view that the landed interests should use their power to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen. During the twenty years between the Corn Laws and the Second Reform Bill Disraeli would seek a Tory-Radical alliance, to little avail. Prior to the 1867 Reform Bill the working class did not possess the vote and therefore had little tangible political power. Although Disraeli forged a personal friendship with John Bright, a Lancashire manufacturer and leading Radical, Disraeli was unable to convince Bright to sacrifice principle for political gain. After one such attempt, Bright noted in his diary that Disraeli "seems unable to comprehend the morality of our political course."^[25]

Protection[link]

Sir Robert Peel, Bt., Prime Minister 1834–35, 1841–46

Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel passed over Disraeli when putting together his government in 1841 and Disraeli, hurt, gradually became a sharp critic of Peel's government, often deliberately adopting positions contrary to those of his nominal chief.^[26] The best known of these cases were the Maynooth grant in 1845 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The end of 1845 and the first months of 1846 were dominated by a battle in parliament between the free traders and the protectionists over the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the latter rallying around Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. An alliance of pro free-trade Conservatives (the "Peelites"), Radicals, and Whigs carried repeal, and the Conservative Party split: the Peelites moved towards the Whigs, while a "new" Conservative Party formed around the protectionists, led by Disraeli, Bentinck, and Lord Stanley (later Lord Derby).^[27] The context of the fight over free trade was famine in Ireland, which Peel hoped might be remedied by importation of grain.

The term "corn" did not refer to maize as it does in the United States. In Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, "corn" meant grain like wheat, oats or rye. Predominantly, however, the term referred to wheat. Wheat was used in making bread. Because nearly every family made bread for their own consumption, wheat was the main staple of the average diet in Britain. Consequently, wheat was regarded as the "staff of life." Accordingly, the price of wheat had a profound effect on the cost of living of the ordinary family. Repeal of the Corn Laws would remove the tariffs on imported wheat and reduce the price of wheat and bread for the average and poor citizens of Britain. Immediately, Peel hoped that the repeal of the tariff on wheat (the Corn Laws) and the resultant influx of cheaper wheat into Britain would remedy the suffering caused by the Great Famine in Ireland due to the successive failure of potato crops.

The split in the Tory/Conservative party over the repeal of the Corn Laws had profound implications for Disraeli's political career: almost every Conservative politician with official experience followed Peel, leaving the rump bereft of leadership. As one biographer wrote, "[Disraeli] found himself almost the only figure on his side capable of putting up the oratorical display essential for a parliamentary leader."^[28] Looking on from the House of Lords, the Duke of Argyll wrote that Disraeli "was like a subaltern in a great battle where every superior officer was killed or wounded."^[29] If the remainder of the Conservative Party could muster the electoral support necessary to form a government, then Disraeli was now guaranteed high office. However, he would take office with a group of men who possessed little or no official experience, who had rarely felt moved to speak in the House of Commons before, and who, as a group, remained hostile to Disraeli on a personal level, his assault on the Corn Laws notwithstanding.^[30]

Bentinck and the leadership[link]

In 1847 a small political crisis occurred which removed Bentinck from the leadership and highlighted Disraeli's differences with his own party. In the preceding general election, Lionel de Rothschild had been returned for the City of London. Ever since Catholic Emancipation, members of parliament were required to swear the oath "on the true faith of a Christian." Rothschild, an unconverted Jew, could not do so and therefore could not take his seat. Lord John Russell, the Whig leader who had succeeded Peel as Prime Minister and like Rothschild a member for the City of London, introduced a Jewish Disabilities Bill to amend the oath and permit Jews to enter Parliament.^[31]

Lord George Bentinck, Conservative leader in the commons 1846–48

Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity was "completed Judaism," and asking of the House of Commons "Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?"^[32] While Disraeli did not argue that the Jews did the Christians a favour by killing Christ, as he had in Tancred and would in Lord George Bentinck,^[33] his speech was badly received by his own party,^[34] which along with the Anglican establishment was hostile to the bill.^[35] Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and a friend of Disraeli's, spoke strongly against the measure and implied that Russell was paying off the Jews for "helping" elect him.^[36] Every member of the future protectionist cabinet then in parliament (except Disraeli) voted against the measure. One member who was not, Lord John Manners, stood against Rothschild when the latter re-submitted himself for election in 1849. Bentinck, then still Conservative leader in the Commons, joined Disraeli in speaking and voting for the bill, although his own speech was a standard one of toleration.^[37]

In the aftermath of the debate Bentinck resigned the leadership and feuded with Stanley, leader in the Lords and overall leader, who had opposed the measure and directed the party whips—in the Commons—to oppose the measure as well. Bentinck was succeeded by Lord Granby; Disraeli's own speech, thought by many of his own party to be blasphemous, ruled him out for the time being.^[38] Even as these intrigues played out, Disraeli was working with the Bentinck family to secure the necessary financing to purchase Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. This purchase allowed him to stand for the county, which was "essential" if one was to lead the Conservative Party at the time. He and Mary Anne alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London for the remainder of their marriage. These negotiations were complicated by the sudden death of Lord George on 21 September 1848, but Disraeli obtained a loan of £25,000 (equivalent to about £1.96 million as of 2012)^[39] from Lord George's brothers Lord Henry Bentinck and Lord Titchfield.^[40]

Within a month Granby resigned the leadership in the commons, feeling himself inadequate to the post, and the party functioned without an actual leader in the commons for the remainder of the parliamentary session. At the start of the next session, affairs were handled by a triumvirate of Granby, Disraeli, and John Charles Herries–indicative of the tension between Disraeli and the rest of the party, who needed his talents but mistrusted the man. This confused arrangement ended with Granby's resignation in 1851; Disraeli effectively ignored the two men regardless.^[41]