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Ray Smith (actor)
Ray Smith (1 May 1936 – 15 December 1991) was a Welsh actor who played the tough-talking police chief, Detective Superintendent Gordon Spikings, in the television series '' Dempsey and Makepeace''. He was the first actor to play Brother Cadfael for BBC radio. Early life Smith was born in Trealaw in the Rhondda Valley, and lived his early years on Ynyscynon Road, but lived for most of his adult life in Dinas Powys. He became interested in acting while he was at school, and was determined not to become a miner like his father, who died in a pit accident when Smith was only three years old. After leaving school Smith became a builder's labourer. Following National Service in the army, he began acting professionally at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Cardiff, then joined the Swansea Grand Theatre as an assistant stage manager. He later moved to London, where he spent a year unemployed before obtaining a part in a play about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Television caree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trealaw
Trealaw is a long village, also a community and electoral ward in the Rhondda Valley, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. It stretches over from the junction of Cemetery Road and Brithweunydd Road in the east, to the junction of Ynyscynon Road and Partridge Road to the northwest. History Trealaw is a dormitory town of the more famous Tonypandy, its name translates from the Welsh language as 'the Town of Alaw', which derives from Alaw Goch or Alaw Coch (red melody), the bardic name of David (Dafydd) Williams (d. 1863) the father of Judge Gwilym Williams (1839–1906), who founded the village (along with that of Williamstown, a village to the south of Trealaw) during the 'coal-rush' of the 19th century. Judge Williams is also commemorated in Trealaw by Judges Hall (in full, the Judge Gwilym Williams Memorial Hall) and in Ynyscynon Road, named after the Williams' family seat at Ynyscynon, near Aberdare in the Cynon Valley. Judges Hall is a community venue used in its heyday for Variety ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam (1973 TV Series)
''Sam'' is a television drama series written by John Finch and produced by Granada Television between 1973 and 1975 for broadcast on ITV. Finch also created and wrote '' A Family at War'' for Granada. The series is based on fact, with Sam as a boy growing up in Featherstone. It was initially set in the coalfields of Yorkshire in the inter-war period but eventually progressed to the modern (then) era. Interior scenes were recorded at Granada's studios in Manchester, while many of the exterior scenes were filmed in Lancashire. For example, the railway station used for filming was Garswood, near Wigan. Local dialect is used, e.g. top-at-knob referring to North Featherstone. The series was made in a video/film hybrid format, which was common at the time. Episodes Series 1: 1973 With Kevin Moreton as Sam aged 11 to 14. It's 1934. Sam Wilson's mother Dora has been left by her husband and taken Sam to her hometown of Skellerton, a Yorkshire mining village. Series 2: 1974 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Callan (TV Series)
''Callan'' is a British action-drama spy television series created by James Mitchell, first airing between 1967 and 1972. It starred Edward Woodward as David Callan, an agent of a state secret service dealing with internal security threats to the United Kingdom. Though portrayed as having responsibilities similar to those of the real-life MI5, Callan's fictional "Section" has ''carte blanche'' to use the most ruthless of methods. In the storylines interrogation is by means of torture, while extrajudicial killings are so routine they have a colour-coded filing system. With the possible exception of ''La Femme Nikita'', no TV series has ever presented a Western government agency in so sinister a light as ''Callan''. Despite being an assassin who stays in the socially isolating job because it is the only thing he is good at, Callan is a sympathetic character by comparison to his sadistic upper-class colleagues and implacable superiors. The downbeat cover for the Section's headq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Softly, Softly (TV Series)
''Softly, Softly'' is a British television police procedural series produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It was created as a spin-off from the series ''Z-Cars'', which ended its fifth series run in December 1965. The series took its title from the proverb "Softly, softly, catchee monkey", the motto of Lancashire Constabulary Training School. Newsletter 853, Saturday 12 October 2013 Series outline ''Softly, Softly'' centred on the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID of ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mystery Submarine (1963 Film)
''Mystery Submarine'' is a 1963 British war film directed by C. M. Pennington-Richards and starring Edward Judd, James Robertson Justice and Laurence Payne. A captured German submarine is used by the Royal Navy to trick a German force aiming to intercept a supply convoy. The film is based on a play by Jon Manchip White. Plot ''U-153'' is damaged during air attack in the Atlantic, and its crew abandon ship to escape chlorine gas now leaking from its battery cells. Her commanding officer is overcome by fumes before he can jettison the ship's papers. Due to the intelligence windfall that this represents, the submarine is taken by a British prize crew to be examined and inspected (in much the same manner that befell the real German U-boat later renamed HMS Graph ). It is not long before British intelligence suggest a new use for the submarine as a Trojan Horse. A picked crew of volunteers led by Commander Tarlton ( Edward Judd) take the ''U-153'' back to war, to intercept and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tomorrow At Ten
''Tomorrow at Ten'' is a 1962 British thriller film directed by Lance Comfort and starring John Gregson, Robert Shaw and Kenneth Cope. Plot A man calling himself Marlow kidnaps Jonathan Chester, the young son of wealthy industrialist Anthony Chester, and locks him in a rented house with a golliwog containing a time bomb. He then goes to see the boy's father and announces that he will only reveal his whereabouts once he has been paid £50,000 (a large sum at the time) and is safely in Brazil. The boy's nanny alerts the police and Inspector Parnell arrives to discourage Chester from paying up lest it encourages giving in to blackmailers' demands. Marlow then reveals that the time bomb will go off at 10 a.m. the next day, killing Jonathan. This is too much for Chester who attacks Marlow, causing the crook serious injuries from which he later dies, leaving the police with little time or indication as to where to find Jonathan. Cast * John Gregson as Inspector Parnell * Robe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The House Under The Water (TV Series)
''The House Under the Water'' is a British historical television drama series which originally aired on BBC One in eight parts during 1961.Baskin p.54 It is an adaptation of the 1932 novel ''The House Under the Water'' by Francis Brett Young, which portrays the late nineteenth century flooding of the Elan Valley in Wales to create a water supply for the rapidly growing city of Birmingham. All eight episodes are now considered to be lost. Cast * Margaret Courtenay as Lucrezia Tregaron (8 episodes) * Richard Bebb as Evan Vaughan (8 episodes) * Carole Mowlam as Philippa Tregaron (8 episodes) * Emrys James as Rob Tregaron (8 episodes) * William Squire as Griffith Tregaron (7 episodes) * Ray Smith as Gerald Tregaron (7 episodes) * Hira Talfrey as Caterina (7 episodes) * Lesley Lloyd as Virginia Tregaron (6 episodes) * Aubrey Richards as Abel Pugh (6 episodes) * Annest Williams as Diana Tregaron (5 episodes) * Patricia Mort as Janet Delahaye (5 episodes) * Arnold Bell as Si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pepsi Tate
Pepsi Tate (10 March 1965 – 18 September 2007) was the bass guitarist of Welsh glam metal band Tigertailz, who made the Top 40 in the UK Albums Chart in the early 1990s. Pepsi's nickname was "Boy" or "The Boy". Born as Huw Justin Smith, son of ''Dempsey and Makepeace'' actor Ray Smith, Pepsi Tate grew up in the village of Dinas Powys, just outside Cardiff. After his career with Tigertailz Justin pursued a career in television as a producer and director. His work for BBC Wales included directing the weekly politics programme, ''Dragon's Eye''. The ''Thrill Pistol'' album (released on 27 August 2007) featured his last recordings. It was dedicated to Pepsi and his family. On 18 September 2007, aged 42, Pepsi Tate died after suffering with pancreatic cancer.Thedeadrockstarsclub.com - accessed 27 April 2012 He died at Holme To ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BAFTA Cymru
BAFTA Cymru (or BAFTA in Wales or WAFTA) is the Welsh branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and was founded in 1987.About BAFTA Cymru British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Retrieved 2017-03-28. The British Academy Cymru Awards were established in 1991, with the first annual held on 30 November 1991. The annual ceremony takes place in to recognise achievement in production, performance and craft categories in Welsh-made films and |
Newport, Wales
Newport ( cy, Casnewydd; ) is a city and county borough in Wales, situated on the River Usk close to its confluence with the Severn Estuary, northeast of Cardiff. With a population of 145,700 at the 2011 census, Newport is the third-largest authority with city status in Wales, and seventh most populous overall. Newport became a unitary authority in 1996 and forms part of the Cardiff-Newport metropolitan area. Newport was the site of the last large-scale armed insurrection in Great Britain, the Newport Rising of 1839. Newport has been a port since medieval times when the first Newport Castle was built by the Normans. The town outgrew the earlier Roman town of Caerleon, immediately upstream and now part of the borough. Newport gained its first charter in 1314. It grew significantly in the 19th century when its port became the focus of coal exports from the eastern South Wales Valleys. Newport was the largest coal exporter in Wales until the rise of Cardiff in the mid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Old Devils
''The Old Devils'' is a novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1986. The novel won the Booker Prize. The plot centres on Alun Weaver, a writer of modest celebrity, who returns to his native Wales with his wife, Rhiannon, sometime girlfriend of Weaver's old acquaintance Peter Thomas. Alun begins associating with a group of former friends, including Peter, all of whom have continued to live locally while he was away. While drinking daily in the pub with the men, he proceeds to cuckold most of them. As with many of his novels, Amis based characters and portions of the plot on real-life figures and experiences. The figure of Brydan a thinly-disguised parody of Dylan Thomas, whom Amis had once met. Amis had a low opinion of Thomas, describing him as a "pernicious figure, one who has helped to get Wales and Welsh poetry a bad name and generally done lasting harm to both... the general picture he draws of the place and the people n his workis false, sentimentalising, melodramatisin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism. He is best known for satirical comedies such as '' Lucky Jim'' (1954), ''One Fat Englishman'' (1963), ''Ending Up'' (1974), ''Jake's Thing'' (1978) and ''The Old Devils'' (1986). His biographer Zachary Leader called Amis "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." He is the father of the novelist Martin Amis. In 2008, ''The Times'' ranked him ninth on a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Life and career Kingsley Amis was born on 16 April 1922 in Clapham, south London, the only child of William Robert Amis (1889–1963), a clerk for the mustard manufacturer Colman's in the City of London, and his wife Rosa Annie (née Lucas). The Amis grandparents were wealthy. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
