The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It first appeared as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine in August and September 1915 before being published in book form in October that year by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. It is the first of the five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous knack for getting himself out of sticky situations.
Trent's Last Case is a detective novel written by E. C. Bentley and first published in the United Kingdom in 1913, and as The Woman in Black in the United States also in 1913. Its central character is the artist and amateur detective Philip Trent. Despite the title, Trent's Last Case is the first novel in which he appears. He subsequently reappeared in the novel Trent's Own Case (1936) and the short-story collection Trent Intervenes (1938).
Annette Crosbie, is a Scottish actor. In 1970, she appeared in an episode of Callan, “Amos Green must live”, as Mrs May Coswood. She is best known for her role as Margaret Meldrew in the BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave (1990–2000). She twice won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress, for The Six Wives of Henry VIII in 1971 and Edward the Seventh. In 1976, she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the 1976 film The Slipper and the Rose and she won the award for Best Actress at the Evening Standard British Film Awards for the same role. Her other film appearances include The Pope Must Die (1991), Shooting Fish (1997), The Debt Collector (1999), Calendar Girls (2003) and Into the Woods (2014).
William Russell is an English dramatist, lyricist and composer. His best known works are Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine, Blood Brothers and Our Day Out.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a British television adaptation of the 1949 novel of the same name by George Orwell, originally broadcast on BBC Television in December 1954. The production proved to be hugely controversial, with questions asked in Parliament and many viewer complaints over its supposed subversive nature and horrific content. In a 2000 poll of industry experts conducted by the British Film Institute to determine the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four was ranked in seventy-third position.
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration. A handful of these plays, including Rumpole of the Bailey, subsequently became television series in their own right.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 for six seasons from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time.
Play of the Month is a BBC television anthology series, which ran from 1965 to 1983 featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays which were usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted regularly from October 1965 to May 1979, before returning for the summer seasons of 1982 and 1983. The producer most associated with the Play of the Month series was Cedric Messina.
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 also actor Vincent Price's third wife.
Julia Foster is an English stage, screen, and television actress.
Joanna McCallum is an English theatre, film and television actress. She is the daughter of English actress Googie Withers and Australian actor John McCallum, and was educated at St Catherine's School in Melbourne. McCallum graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1969. She is married to writer Roger Davenport.
Michael Deacon was a Scottish actor.
Mary Elizabeth Miller was an English television and stage actress, who was a founding member of the National Theatre Company in 1963.
The Forsyte Saga is a 1967 BBC television adaptation of John Galsworthy's series of The Forsyte Saga novels, and its sequel trilogy A Modern Comedy. The series follows the fortunes of the upper middle class Forsyte family, and stars Eric Porter as Soames, Kenneth More as Young Jolyon and Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene.
The World of Wooster is a comedy television series, based on the Jeeves stories by author P. G. Wodehouse. The television series starred Ian Carmichael as English gentleman Bertie Wooster and Dennis Price as Bertie's valet Jeeves.
St. Ives was a television mini-series broadcast in 1955. Adapted by producer Rex Tucker from the novel of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson, it aired on the BBC for a total of six 30-minute episodes. Cast included William Russell, Noelle Middleton, and Francis Matthews. The most notable aspect of the production is that, unlike many BBC series of the era, the episodes still exist. Later BBC television versions of the story aired in 1960 and 1967, but are believed to have been wiped.
Theatre Night is the umbrella title under which adaptations of classic and contemporary stage plays were usually broadcast on BBC 2 between 15 September 1985 and 21 July 1990.
Good Morning, Bill is a comedic play by P. G. Wodehouse, adapted from the Hungarian play Doktor Juci Szabo by playwright Ladislaus Fodor. It premiered in London at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1927.
Roger Davenport is an English author, actor and screenwriter. He is the son of John Davenport, who was for many years a literary critic writing for The Observer newspaper. Graduating from LAMDA in 1967, Davenport worked extensively in British theatre before becoming a writer. He is married to the actress Joanna McCallum.
