18 Facts About Emlyn Williams

George Emlyn Williams, CBE was a Welsh writer, dramatist and actor.

Emlyn Williams was the eldest of the three surviving sons of Mary a former maid-servant and Richard Williams, a greengrocer.

Emlyn Williams spoke only Welsh until the age of eight.

Emlyn Williams was a teacher of French at the grammar school in Holywell, Flintshire in 1915, where Williams had gone on a scholarship.

In 1926, during his studies at university, Emlyn Williams had a nervous breakdown, which was blamed largely on a failed emotional friendship with another undergraduate.

However, Emlyn Williams intended to enter the theatrical world too and joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society.

Aged 22, Emlyn Williams performed with OUDS in his first full-length play, Full Moon, at the original Oxford Playhouse in 1927.

Emlyn Williams starred as a Welsh schoolboy in the play's London premiere.

Emlyn Williams was a close friend of Kate's parents, Richard Burton and Burton's first wife, Sybil.

Emlyn Williams played the mad Roman emperor Caligula in an uncompleted 1937 film version of Robert Graves's novel I, Claudius ; a kindly veterinarian who accidentally causes the death of a murderess in the 1952 suspense drama Another Man's Poison; and the fool Wamba in the 1952 Ivanhoe.

In 1941 Emlyn Williams starred in the film You Will Remember, directed by Jack Raymond and written by Sewell Stokes and Lydia Hayward.

Emlyn Williams often appeared in his own plays, and was famous for his one-man shows, with which he toured the world, playing Charles Dickens in an evening of excerpts from Dickens's novels.

Emlyn Williams's post-war acting credits included The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan and The Deputy aka The Representative by Rolf Hochhuth on Broadway.

Emlyn Williams was the "voice" of Lloyd George in the seminal BBC documentary The Great War.

On Monday 17 February 1975, Emlyn Williams was Roy Plomley's guest on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4.

Emlyn Williams was married in 1935 to actress Mary Marjorie O'Shann, who died in 1970.

Emlyn Williams maintained a relationship from 1981 to 1986 with American theatre journalist Albert N Williams whom Emlyn met while appearing at the Northlight Theatre in the Chicago area with his one-man Charles Dickens show.

Emlyn Williams died on 25 September 1987 at his flat in Dovehouse Street, Chelsea, London, from complications from bowel cancer.