21 Facts About Gervase Farjeon

Gervase Laurence Farjeon was an English theatre producer, director, manager and designer.

Gervase Farjeon nursed it through its record-breaking five-year run in London's West End and in the 1960s produced further shows in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

From 1965 he was the literary executor of his aunt, the English author and poet Eleanor Farjeon and allowed her hymn Morning Has Broken to be recorded by the pop singer Cat Stevens.

Gervase Farjeon was born in Bucklebury, Berkshire, England on 23 October 1920.

Gervase Farjeon was the third child and only son of Herbert Farjeon, a presenter of revues, lyricist, playwright and theatre manager, whose father had been a novelist and playwright and a friend of Charles Dickens and whose mother was descended from the Jefferson acting dynasty of the United States.

Gervase Farjeon's mother was Joan Gervase Farjeon, nee Thornycroft, the daughter of the sculptor Sir Hamo Thornycroft RA.

Gervase Farjeon was a first cousin of the poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Gervase Farjeon grew up surrounded by musicians, actors, artists and writers and listened to stories and gossip about many of the artistic figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Gervase Farjeon's father, being the son of a Jew and a prominent figure in Britain, was at risk of detention and possible deportation should Nazi forces invade the United Kingdom.

Several productions in which he appeared were produced under the auspices of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, the forerunner of the Arts Council of Great Britain, where Gervase Farjeon was noticed by Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson and invited to work for the Council in the theatrical field as part of its duties to promote and maintain British culture.

In 1946, Gervase Farjeon was invited by Leonard Sachs, its director, to become stage director at the Players' Theatre in London's West End.

Gervase Farjeon and O'Donoghue's final production was An Evening of Music Hall opening at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1965, with the comedian Cyril Fletcher, the actor and musical star Jessie Matthews, and members of the Players' Theatre.

For many years Gervase Farjeon was responsible for the design of all of Hewer-Hall's many productions throughout the UK and much of Western Europe and found himself in demand to create stage designs for other new companies entering the same field.

Gervase Farjeon's obituarist noted in The Independent that "his designs were ingenious, painstakingly crafted and planned, combining all he knew of art, architecture and theatre".

Gervase Farjeon was remembered for "working all night to perfect models, create effects and tiny intricate details".

Gervase Farjeon was the "meticulous cataloguer" of other literary and artistic archives passed down to him from both his father and mother and their families.

Gervase Farjeon married the musical comedy actor Violetta a Beckett Williams early in 1949.

In later life, for twenty years until his death, Gervase Farjeon shared his life with the actor, broadcaster and poetry and literary anthologist Anne Harvey, though he and his wife remained married.

Harvey recorded that Gervase Farjeon was "a man of many talents who remained modestly self-effacing, never convinced he had met the successes of better-known members of his family".

Gervase Farjeon died from prostate cancer in London at the age of 80 on 6 August 2001.

Gervase Farjeon was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in North London and his ashes were scattered at his request at his and his wife's property in West Sussex, "under the copper beech tree".