26 Facts About Michael Flanders

Michael Henry Flanders was an English actor, broadcaster, writer and performer of comic songs.

Michael Flanders is best known for his stage partnership with Donald Swann.

Michael Flanders made a career as a prolific broadcaster on the radio and later on television.

Michael Flanders wrote opera librettos, a children's book, a volume of poetry and the words of Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo, a cantata about Noah's Ark.

Michael Flanders was born in Hampstead, London, the third child and only son to Percy Henry Michael Flanders and his wife, Rosa Laura, daughter of Charles O'Beirne, of Hastings.

Michael Flanders's father had a variety of occupations, including actor and cinema manager.

From 1936 to 1940 Michael Flanders was a pupil at Westminster School, where his contemporaries included Peter Ustinov, Peter Brook, Tony Benn and Donald Swann.

Michael Flanders's roles included Brabantio in Othello, Pirandello's Henry IV and Shawcross in Auden and Isherwood's The Ascent of F6.

Michael Flanders wrote drama criticisms for the Oxford magazine Cherwell.

In 1942 Michael Flanders applied to join the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, serving at first as an able seaman, and later commissioned as a sub-lieutenant.

Michael Flanders survived unharmed a torpedo attack in 1942 on his ship, HMS Marne, but the following year he contracted poliomyelitis at sea and spent the next three years in hospitals.

Michael Flanders was deeply upset when the university authorities refused, because of his disabilities, to allow him back to resume his studies.

Michael Flanders returned to the family home in Hampstead Garden Suburb.

Michael Flanders directed and produced plays with a local amateur theatre group and arranged small musical gatherings with other amateurs of music, including Gerard Hoffnung and Frank Hauser.

Michael Flanders found that his spoken introductions were as well received by the audience as were the songs themselves.

Michael Flanders was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1972 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

Michael Flanders acted in the films Doctor in Distress and The Raging Moon.

Michael Flanders provided the storyteller's voice on the British soundtrack of the Barbapapa animated cartoon series, and narrated many documentaries, including the 1969 BBC Royal Family.

Michael Flanders published a book of poems, Creatures Great and Small, in 1964, and a children's book The Sayings and Doings of Nasrudin the Wise in 1974.

For EMI Michael Flanders recorded the narration of Peter and the Wolf with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Efrem Kurtz.

Michael Flanders was the narrator on an EMI LP "Elizabeth the Great" celebrating Queen Elizabeth I, with Mary Morris as Elizabeth.

On 31 December 1959, Michael Flanders married Claudia Davis, daughter of the journalist Claud Cockburn and stepdaughter of Robert Gorham Davis, professor of English at Columbia University in New York.

Michael Flanders was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1964 New Year's Honours.

Michael Flanders was an eloquent advocate of better access to theatres for people with disabilities, and later he interested himself in other campaigning issues.

Michael Flanders died suddenly on 14 April 1975, aged 53, of a ruptured intracranial berry aneurysm, while on holiday at Betws-y-Coed, Wales.

Michael Flanders's ashes were scattered in the grounds of Chiswick House in west London, a place where he had often liked to sit in the afternoon during the final years of his life.