Susan Elizabeth Birtwistle, Lady Eyre, (born 9 December 1945) [1] is a producer and writer of television drama. Birtwistle has won awards for several of her productions, including Hotel du Lac , Pride and Prejudice and Emma , and was one of the nominees for the 2008 BAFTA Awards for her production of Cranford . [2]
Birtwistle was born in Northwich, Cheshire, England, and attended Northwich County Grammar School for Girls (now The County High School, Leftwich). She studied drama and English at Coventry College of Education (became part of the University of Warwick).
Birtwistle is known for producing well-known costume dramas.
Birtwistle married the English film, theatre, television and opera director Richard Eyre in 1973 in Chelsea, London; they have one daughter. [3]
In 2008, she was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Chester. [4]
Dame Judith Olivia Dench is a British actress. Widely considered one of Britain's greatest actors, she is noted for her versatility, having appeared in films and television programmes encompassing several genres, as well as for her numerous roles on the stage. Dench has garnered various accolades throughout a career that spans seven decades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, two Golden Globe Awards, four British Academy Television Awards, six British Academy Film Awards, and seven Olivier Awards.
Dame Penelope Alice Wilton is an English actress.
Anna Raymond Massey was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Best Actress Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel Hotel du Lac, a role that one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, has said "could have been written for her". Massey is also well known for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) as a barmaid who becomes involved with a suspected killer. She performed over one hundred character roles in British film and television.
Francesca Annis is an English actress. She is known for television roles in Reckless (1998), Wives and Daughters (1999), Deceit (2000), and Cranford (2007). A six-time BAFTA TV Award nominee, she won the 1979 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the ITV serial Lillie. Her film appearances include Krull (1983), Dune (1984), The Debt Collector (1999), and The Libertine (2004).
Pride and Prejudice is a six-episode 1995 British television drama, adapted by Andrew Davies from Jane Austen's 1813 novel of the same name. Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth starred as Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, respectively. Produced by Sue Birtwistle and directed by Simon Langton, the serial was a BBC production with additional funding from the American A&E Network. BBC1 originally broadcast the 55-minute episodes from 24 September to 29 October 1995. The A&E Network aired the series in double episodes on three consecutive nights beginning 14 January 1996.
Patricia Ann Hodge, OBE is an English actress. She is known on-screen for playing Phyllida Erskine-Brown in Rumpole of the Bailey (1978–1992), Jemima Shore in Jemima Shore Investigates (1983), Penny in Miranda (2009–2015) and Mrs Pumphrey in All Creatures Great and Small (2021–present).
Carl Davis was an American-born British conductor and composer. He wrote music for more than 100 television programmes (notably the landmark ITV series The World At War and BBC's Pride and Prejudice, created new scores for concert and cinema performances of vintage silent movies and composed many film, ballet and concert scores that were performed worldwide, including the Liverpool Oratorio in 1991. Davis's publisher was Faber Music.
Susannah Harker is an English film, television, and theatre actress. She was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award in 1990 for her role as Mattie Storin in House of Cards. She played Jane Bennet in the 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
Judy Catherine Claire Parfitt is an English theatre, film, and television actress. She made her film debut in the 1950s, followed by a supporting role in the BBC television serial David Copperfield (1966). She also appeared as Queen Gertrude in Tony Richardson's 1969 film adaptation of Hamlet.
Emma Christina Tennant FRSL was an English novelist and editor of Scottish extraction, known for a post-modern approach to her fiction, often imbued with fantasy or magic. Several of her novels give a feminist or dreamlike twist to classic stories, such as Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Ms Jekyll and Mrs Hyde. She also published under the pseudonym Catherine Aydy.
Claudie Blakley is an English actress. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. In 1998, she won the Ian Charleson Award for her performance in The Seagull at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. She is best known for her role as Emma Timmins in the BBC drama series Lark Rise to Candleford.
The County High School, Leftwich, is a coeducational secondary school with academy status, for students between 11 and 16 years of age, in Leftwich, Cheshire, England.
Ruth Wilson is an English actress. She has played the eponymous protagonist in Jane Eyre (2006), Alice Morgan in the BBC psychological crime drama Luther, Alison Lockhart in the Showtime drama The Affair (2014–2018), and the eponymous character in Mrs Wilson (2018). From 2019 to 2022, she portrayed Marisa Coulter in the BBC/HBO fantasy series His Dark Materials, and for this role she won the 2020 BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Actress. Her film credits include The Lone Ranger (2013), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), and Dark River (2017).
Sandra Elizabeth "Sandy" Welch is a British television writer and screenwriter.
Heidi Thomas is an English screenwriter and playwright.
Cranford is a British television series directed by Simon Curtis and Steve Hudson. The teleplay by Heidi Thomas was adapted from three novellas by Elizabeth Gaskell published between 1849 and 1858: Cranford, My Lady Ludlow and Mr Harrison's Confessions. "The Last Generation in England" was also used as a source.
Emma Lowndes is an English actress, known for portraying Bella Gregson in Cranford, Mary Rivers in Jane Eyre and Margie Drewe in Downton Abbey.
Giles Foster has been an English television director since 1975, specialising in television dramas. He has also directed in Australia and in Germany (2012-2014). He wrote some television dramas in the 1970s.
Hotel du Lac is a television version of the 1984 Booker prize-winning novel by Anita Brookner. It stars Anna Massey and Denholm Elliott and was released in 1986 as an episode of the BBC's Screen Two series. It was directed by Giles Foster, produced by Sue Birtwistle with music by Carl Davis and cinematography by Kenneth MacMillan.
Maggie Lunn was an English casting director, for leading theatre companies and for notable productions on television and film.