And Furthermore - Hardcover

1934–1957

I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE THAT it is more than half a century since I first stepped on to the stage of the Old Vic Theatre, and into a way of life that has brought me the most rewarding professional relationships and friendships. I cannot imagine now ever doing anything else with my life except acting, but it was not something that I actually planned when I was growing up. That may seem strange, as my whole family was deeply involved in theatre in one way or another.

My father was a doctor in general practice, but spent much of his spare time acting with the Settlement Players, a very good amateur group in York. He and my mother were keen theatre-goers, so my elder brothers and I were taken to the theatre from a very early age. When I saw the celebrated farce Cuckoo in the Nest by Ben Travers, I laughed so much when a man jumped up in a laundry basket at the end of a bed wearing those combinations they called longjohns, that I thought I would have some kind of fit. In fact I think my mother must have decided that I really was going to have a fit, because I was taken home at the interval, and only brought back the next night to see the second half of the play. We went to Peter Pan at Leeds, and when we came home I said, ‘Couldn’t we fix some wires up in the waiting room, and I could come flying in from the consulting room to the waiting room?’ My parents must have been in despair.

Daddy was a fine actor, and a marvellous after-dinner speaker; with a great sense of timing. He had the ease of an Irishman in telling stories, and he had a brilliant sense of humour. He was actually born in Dorset, but brought up in Dublin, and only moved to York after he married. He was so very grounded as a doctor. I used to go visiting patients with him, and as he turned into roads the children used to come and hold on to the car. He became really very popular as a GP, and we hardly ever saw him at any meals, because he was always out delivering babies. People still come up to me and say, ‘You won’t believe this, but your father delivered me as a baby.’ I always try to look surprised.

Mummy also acted occasionally, but more often was responsible for the costumes. Once they went to a party with Daddy as Shakespeare and Mummy as Elizabeth I, and she made the most incredible dress for the Queen. They were also in a film about Dick Turpin’s ride to York, and I still have the picture of the two of them on the stairs at home. A man called Wilson, who taught me to ride, was in the film with them, and he left us a box of costumes from it, with various bodices and skirts.

Mummy could whip up anything, and after I had seen the Laurence Olivier film of Henry V I longed to go to a fancy-dress party as the Princess of France, so she made me the most beautiful dress, with cotton-wool all round the sleeve marked like ermine. I made the headdress that I had seen Renée Asherson wearing, with a piece of netting round my head and a ruler through the top. It looked absolutely terrific. (It never crossed my mind that one day I would play that part onstage.) Over the years there were all sorts of things that had just got put in the ottoman, which we were always digging through; I just thought that all families got dressed up like that.

When the Settlement Players did Christopher Fry’s The Firstborn I played Tuesret, the pharaoh’s daughter. Christopher became a great friend years later, and I rather regret that is the only time I have ever acted in one of his plays. When I was at Clifton Preparatory School we did a Nativity Play and I was told I was to play a fairy, which I was quite cross about, because I knew the Nativity story did not involve fairies. I also played a snail once, and Alice in Alice in Wonderland.

My brothers, Peter and Jeffery, who were quite a bit older than me, appeared in school productions at St Peter’s in York, which is one of the oldest schools in the country. In Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra Peter played Caesar and Jeff was Cleopatra. I saw Jeff as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew and Cassius in Julius Caesar, and Peter as Duncan in Macbeth. I thought it was very racy to spin round on the piano stool at home and say, ‘What bloody man is that?’ That was all I remembered of the play, but I did say that rather a lot.

Because of the age-gap between us I was of course sent to bed much earlier than the boys, and I remember so well going to bed and hearing them playing cricket in the garden, and hearing all that life going on outside; I simply couldn’t bear it, and it is still like that. I don’t like missing anything, even today I hate to be in bed and hear people talking downstairs, because I am far too nosy, I have to know what they are on about.

Our house was in an area called ‘York Without’, because it was outside the city walls. We had a long straight strip of garden, with a few apple trees. We couldn’t grow very much, apart from some lovely lilies-of-the-valley and a few roses, and we used to rake the pears off the tree next door. At the end of the garden was an old barn, and owls used to live in there. When the boys had friends round playing cricket they were always knocking the ball over into Miss Lazenby’s garden, and she would never give the ball back, however much we asked for it. One day Jeff found a rat in the barn, and they did it all up and gave it to me to take it round and push through her door. Daddy heard about it, and told us all off.

My first school, Miss Meaby’s, was just up the road from my brothers’ school, St Peter’s, so when I finished for the day I used to go and sit on the wall to watch the boys playing games, waiting for my mother to come and take us home.

When I went to the Mount School in the city there were no such things as day-girls, so I had to be a boarder all the time, but I didn’t mind that at all really. We were allowed home at weekends for just a day, but not to sleep. When games were cancelled we had to go on what was called a ‘wet-walk’, all sorts of different walks that we had to do. So I used to go out of school, ring up home, and they would come and fetch us. We would have a huge tea, then Mummy would water us in the garden with a watering-can, drop us at a corner near school, and we trudged back soaked to the skin. I don’t think we were ever caught out.

The first play I saw at the Mount was Julius Caesar, with lots of big girls in bigger togas. I thought that was not at all a good play to do, and it is the one Roman play I have fought shy of ever since. But it was there that I first played Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a role I returned to with the RSC in 1962 for Peter Hall, and again in 2010 at his request at the Kingston Rose Theatre.

The teacher who had the most influence on me had been known as Joy Harvey when she had worked with John Gielgud, but at school she was called Mrs Macdonald. Her marriage had broken up, but after I left she wrote me the most lovely letter, saying that she was standing on York Station when suddenly her husband had appeared and they had got together again, years after their break-up. She seemed to me quite dissipated; she used to drink, and smoked like a chimney, but she would suddenly talk about acting in the professional theatre, and bring it all alive. She was a good laugher, but she took it very seriously, and she was a terrific teacher.

That is why I have reservations about drama students being taught by people who have never actually worked in the theatre. It has worked sometimes, for actors like John Neville and Richard Burton, but most people need somebody to tell them what it is actually like to be in a company, how you should behave, and...