Alan Bennett is an English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter. Over his entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George (1994). In 2005 he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award.
Prunella Margaret Rumney West Scales is an English retired actor. She portrayed Sybil Fawlty, the bossy wife of Basil Fawlty, in the BBC comedy Fawlty Towers, Queen Elizabeth II in A Question of Attribution by Alan Bennett and appeared in the documentary series Great Canal Journeys (2014–2021), travelling on narrowboats with her husband, fellow actor Timothy West.
Sir Alan Arthur Bates was an English actor who came to prominence in the 1960s, when he appeared in films ranging from Whistle Down the Wind to the "kitchen sink" drama A Kind of Loving.
Dame Penelope Alice Wilton is an English actress.
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards.
Anthony Frederick Blunt, styled Sir Anthony Blunt from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy.
Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild,, was a British scientist, intelligence officer during World War II, and later a senior executive with Royal Dutch Shell and N M Rothschild & Sons, and an advisor to the Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher governments of the UK. He was a member of the prominent Rothschild family.
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess was a British diplomat and Soviet double agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 to the Soviet Union, with his fellow spy Donald Maclean, led to a serious breach in Anglo-United States intelligence co-operation, and caused long-lasting disruption and demoralisation in Britain's foreign and diplomatic services.
Talking Heads is a 1988 TV series of dramatic monologues written for BBC television by British playwright Alan Bennett. The first series was broadcast on BBC1 in 1988, and adapted for radio on BBC Radio 4 in 1991. A second series was broadcast on BBC Two in 1998. They have since been included on the A-level and GCSE English Literature syllabus. Some episodes aired on PBS in the United States as part of its Masterpiece Theatre programme.
Walter John Buchanan was a Scottish theatre and film actor, singer, dancer, producer and director. He was known for three decades as the embodiment of the debonair man-about-town in the tradition of George Grossmith Jr., and was described by The Times as "the last of the knuts." He is best known in America for his role in the classic Hollywood musical The Band Wagon in 1953.
An Englishman Abroad is a 1983 BBC television drama film based on the true story of a chance meeting of actress Coral Browne with Guy Burgess, a member of the Cambridge spy ring who spied for the Soviet Union while an officer at MI6. The production was written by Alan Bennett and directed by John Schlesinger. Browne stars as herself.
Coral Edith Browne was an Australian-American stage and screen actress. Her extensive theatre credits included Broadway productions of Macbeth (1956), The Rehearsal (1963) and The Right Honourable Gentleman (1965). She won the 1984 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC TV film An Englishman Abroad (1983). Her film appearances included Auntie Mame (1958), The Killing of Sister George (1968), The Ruling Class (1972) and Dreamchild (1985). She was actor Vincent Price's third wife.
Cambridge Spies is a four-part British drama miniseries written by Peter Moffat and directed by Tim Fywell, that was first broadcast on BBC Two in May 2003 and is based on the true story of four brilliant young men at the University of Cambridge who are recruited to spy for the Soviet Union in 1934.
George Innes Llewelyn Lloyd was a Welsh television producer. He had a long career in BBC drama, which included producing series such as Doctor Who and Talking Heads.
Brigit Dorothea Mills, better known by her stage name Brigit Forsyth, was a British actress from Malton, England, best known for her roles as Thelma Ferris in the BBC comedy Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? and Helen Yeldham in the ITV drama Boon. From 2013 to 2019, Forsyth appeared in the BBC comedy Still Open All Hours.
A Question of Attribution is a 1988 one-act stage play, written by Alan Bennett. It focuses on the British art expert and former Soviet agent, Sir Anthony Blunt. It was premiered at the National Theatre, London, on 1 December 1988, directed by Simon Callow. The stage version of An Englishman Abroad, about Blunt's fellow agent Guy Burgess, was also performed on the same bill. The two plays are collectively called Single Spies.
Arnold Deutsch (1903–1942?), variously described as Austrian, Czech or Hungarian, was an academic who worked in London as a Soviet spy, best known for having recruited Kim Philby. Much of his life remains unknown or disputed.
Guy Maynard Liddell, CB, CBE, MC was a British intelligence officer.
John Goodwin was a British theatre publicist, writer and editor who played a crucial role in the development of subsidised theatre in post-war Britain; first with the Royal Shakespeare Company where in the 60s he led the media campaign against concerted attempts to close its flourishing London base; then with the Royal National Theatre where, as an associate director and member of its planning committee, he was a key figure in the administrative team which, in the '70s and '80s, shaped its historic first years on London's South Bank. He was the author of a number of books on the theatre including the best-selling A Short Guide to Shakspeare's Plays. He also edited and compiled the classic reference work British Theatre Design and edited the internationally best-selling diaries of Sir Peter Hall.
