Robert William Speaight (; 1904 – 1976) was a British actor and writer, and the brother of

George Speaight George Victor Speaight FRSA (; 6 September 1914 – 22 December 2005) was a theatre historian, author and performer and the leading authority on 19th-century toy theatre. Early years One of his brothers was the Shakespearean actor Robert Speai ...

, the puppeteer. Speaight studied under

Elsie Fogerty Anne Elizabeth "Elsie" Fogerty (16 December 1865 – 4 July 1945) was a British teacher who departed from the customary practice of "voice and diction" also called elocution. At that time "Voice and Diction" focused entirely on the mouth and ...

at the

Central School of Speech and Drama The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, commonly shortened to Central, is a drama school founded by Elsie Fogerty in 1906, as the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for ...

, then based in the

Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres ...

, London. He was an early performer (from 1927) in

radio play Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatised, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine ...

s. He came to prominence as Becket in the first production of

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...

's ''

Murder in the Cathedral ''Murder in the Cathedral'' is a verse drama by T. S. Eliot, first performed in 1935 (published the same year). The play portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral during the reign of Henry II in 1170. El ...

''. He went on to

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

an roles and to

direct Direct may refer to: Mathematics * Directed set, in order theory * Direct limit of (pre), sheaves * Direct sum of modules, a construction in abstract algebra which combines several vector spaces Computing * Direct access (disambiguation), ...

. He played the title role in the first broadcast in 1941-42 of the radio drama '' The Man Born to Be King''. He also wrote criticism and essays, works on the theatre and biography. He was a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

convert, and biographer of

Hilaire Belloc Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc ( ; ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a French-English writer, politician, and historian. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic fait ...

and

Eric Gill Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' describes Gill as "the greatest artist-craftsma ...

. In the case of Gill, a personal friend, he suppressed material about Gill's sexual interests, which would come out only in the 1989 biography by Fiona MacCarthy. He married the Welsh actress Evelyn Bowen, with whom he had a son; they separated in 1939. Evelyn later married the celebrated Irish writer

Frank O'Connor Frank O'Connor (born Michael Francis O'Donovan; 17 September 1903 – 10 March 1966) was an Irish author and translator. He wrote poetry (original and translations from Irish), dramatic works, memoirs, journalistic columns and features on as ...

, with whom she had three children.

Works

*Mutinous Wind (1932) *The Lost Hero (1934) novel *Nurse Cavell (1934) play, role of the German spy in C.S. Forester's play about the life of

Edith Cavell Edith Louisa Cavell ( ; 4 December 1865 – 12 October 1915) was a British nurse. She is celebrated for treating wounded soldiers from both sides without discrimination during the First World War and for helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape ...

*Legend of Helena Vaughan (1936) novel *The Angel in the Mist (1936) *St. Thomas of Canterbury (1938) *Acting: its idea and tradition (1939) *The Unbroken Heart (1939) *Since 1939 - Drama, the Novel, Poetry, Prose Literature (1949) with John Hayward, Henry Reed,

Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry ...

– earlier as pamphlet ''Drama Since 1939'' (1947) *

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...

(1954) "The English Novelists series" *

William Poel William Poel (22 July 1852 – 13 December 1934) was an English actor, theatrical manager and dramatist best known for his presentations of Shakespeare. Life and career A son of William Pole, he grew up among Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood paint ...

and the Elizabethan Revival (1954) *Nature in Shakespearian Tragedy (1955) *Life of

(1957) *Letters from Hilaire Belloc (1958) editor *Christian Theatre (1960) volume 124 in the 20th Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism *William Rothenstein: The Portrait of an Artist in His Time (1962) *

Ronald Knox Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (17 February 1888 – 24 August 1957) was an English Catholic priest, theologian Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an ...

: The Priest, The Writer (1965) with Thomas Corbishley *The Life of

(1966) *

Teilhard de Chardin Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (; 1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit, Catholic priest, scientist, palaeontologist, theologian, and teacher. He was Darwinian and progressive in outlook and the author of several influential theologica ...

: A Biography (1967) *Teilhard de Chardin: Re-Mythologization. Three Papers (1970) with Robert V. Wilshire and J. V. Langmead Casserley *Vanier: Soldier, Diplomat and Governor General; A Biography (1970) on

Georges Vanier Georges-Philias Vanier (; 23 April 1888 – 5 March 1967) was a Canadian military officer, diplomat, and statesman who served as the 19th governor general of Canada from 1959 to 1967, the first Quebecer (demonym), Quebecer and second Can ...

*The Property Basket. Recollections of a Divided Life (1970) autobiography *A Bridges-Adams Letter Book (1971) editor *Essays by Divers Hands Vol. XXXVII (1972) editor *Shakespeare on the Stage; an Illustrated History of Shakespearian Performance (1973) *

Georges Bernanos Louis Émile Clément Georges Bernanos (; 20 February 1888 – 5 July 1948) was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. A Catholic with monarchist leanings, he was critical of elitist thought and was opposed to what he identified as d ...

: A Study of the Man and the Writer (1974) *The Companion Guide to Burgundy (1975) *

François Mauriac François Charles Mauriac (; ; 11 October 1885 – 1 September 1970) was a French novelist, dramatist, critic, poet, and journalist, a member of the'' Académie française'' (from 1933), and laureate of the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Pr ...

: A Study of the Writer and the Man (1976) *Shakespeare - the Man and his Achievement (1977)

Recordings

*'' The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'' (

) *''

The Hollow Men "The Hollow Men" (1925) is a poem by the modernist writer T. S. Eliot. Like much of his work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary, concerned with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles, hopelessness, religious conversi ...

'' (T. S. Eliot) *''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United ...

'' (T. S. Eliot) *''

Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday is a holy day of prayer and fasting in many Western Christian denominations. It is preceded by Shrove Tuesday and marks the first day of Lent: the seven weeks of Christian prayer, prayer, Religious fasting#Christianity, fasting and ...

'' (T. S. Eliot) *Thomas a-Becket's Sermon from ''

'' (T. S. Eliot) *''

Four Quartets ''Four Quartets'' is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, ''Burnt Norton'', was published with a collection of his early works (1936's ''Collected Poems 1909–1935''). After a fe ...

'' (T. S. Eliot)

Filmography

*
London 1942
' (1943) - narrator

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Speaight, Robert English male radio actors English biographers English literary critics 1904 births 1976 deaths 20th-century British biographers 20th-century British male actors Commanders of the Order of the British Empire