Lyulph Stanley School, Camden Street: corner of Camden Street and Plender Street". Collage – The London Picture Archive. City of London Corporation. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018 . Retrieved 16 February 2020. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Kenneth had told me that his father had committed suicide. ‘When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. If you can. Charlie couldn’t.’ Williams, Kenneth (1993). Davies, Russell (ed.). The Kenneth Williams Diaries. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780007291922. Rampton, James (8 March 2006). "Michael Sheen carries off the life of Kenneth Williams". The Independent. Archived from the original on 23 February 2020 . Retrieved 23 February 2020.

There are also several recordings of Round the Horne [57] and Just a Minute that include Williams. [58] Books [ edit ] index". johnmurray.co.uk. Archived from the original on 19 July 2011 . Retrieved 22 September 2014. Kenneth Williams – Interview by Owen Spencer Thomas – BBC London Radio". Video Curios. 27 April 2015. Archived from the original on 11 December 2021 . Retrieved 21 September 2019.His very brilliance as a raconteur added to his self-loathing. ‘Most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable,’ said Cyril Connolly, ‘they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own to dispense it in noises upon the air.’ Contrary to several opinions, I don’t believe he was tortured by his sexuality. He was born in 1926, forty-one years before the legalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults. He belonged to a more discreet generation, as he said, ‘before the love that dare not speak its name started shouting the odds from the rooftops.’ Was he homosexual? ‘Mentally yes, spiritually yes, physically no,’ was his sober answer. In his cups, he would tell the tale of his exciting encounter with a young Sikh in Ceylon, in a coconut grove in Kurunegala. ‘It was only fumbling, just the Barclays Bank.’ Customarily, when ladies were present, he eschewed the rhyming slang and put on his Noel Coward voice to roll the word ‘masturbatory’ round his tongue. An audio reading of Monkey, Arthur Waley's translation of Journey to the West, for Nimbus Records (1981). Re-released on MP3 CD:NI5888, in 2008. [56]

By chance, Dennis was with Williams at his flat in August 1967 when news of Orton's murder at the hands of his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, broke. He tells Stevens that Williams was unable to take in what had happened. He refused to speak to the BBC and instead went out to the cinema, remaining in denial for several months. The first of the programmes said that, towards the end of his life and struggling with depression and ill health, Williams abandoned Christianity following discussions with the poet Philip Larkin. Williams had been brought up a Wesleyan and then a Methodist, though he spent much of his life struggling with Christianity's teachings on homosexuality. [43] Perhaps the most moving of Stevens's discoveries, however, are lines in one of the letters to his friends Tom and Clive that express his growing disenchantment with the notion that it was possible to be truly close to another person: "All problems have to be solved eventually by ONESELF, and that's where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis, A MAN IS AN ISLAND." Stevens, Christopher (2011). Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams. London: John Murray. pp.7–9. ISBN 978-1-84854-195-5.

a b "Watch: Carry On Star Kenneth Williams speaking Welsh on TV show". Nation.Cymru. 22 February 2023 . Retrieved 22 February 2023. From the mid-1950s, Williams lived in a succession of small rented flats in central London. After his father died, his mother Louisa lived near him, and then in the flat next to his. His last home was a flat on Osnaburgh Street, Bloomsbury [35] (since demolished). [36] Putting one up for Kenneth Williams". Heritage Calling. 22 February 2014. Archived from the original on 23 April 2018 . Retrieved 28 June 2017. Freeland, Michael (1993). Kenneth Williams: A Biography. Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd. ISBN 978-0297812258. Stevens, Christopher (2010). Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams. Hachette UK. ISBN 978-1-848-54460-4.

GRO Register of Deaths: JUN 1988 14 1873 CAMDEN – Kenneth Charles Williams, DoB = 22 February 1926 aged 62verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - For more than forty years the much-loved actor, broadcaster and comedian Kenneth Williams kept a journal whose existence he occasionally used as a thread ('You'll be in my diary!') but whose contents he tantalisingly kept almost completely to himself.After his death in 1988, rumours that the diaries might one day be published sent a shiver of anticipation and dread through the theatrical world. What would they reveal about friends and colleagues And what would they disclose of the darker, lonelier side which it was widely suspected lay behind Williams's outrageous public person 864 pp. Englisch. Tom Waine and Clive Dennis feature frequently in the published extracts, but they're never fully identified," Stevens said. "One was an Oxford graduate working in the media and the other a postman. Kenneth introduced them both to Swinging London and he enjoyed the frisson of arriving at debauched parties with two 21-year-old men, one of them fey and elegant, and the other raffish and working-class."

As erudite as he was rude, Kenneth Williams is now remembered as the author of a bleak and illuminating diary and not just for his saucy anecdotes and Carry On films. But as a new authorised biography reveals, the outrageous performer and raconteur had melancholy secrets that are only now emerging. Kenneth Charles Williams was born on 22 February 1926 in Bingfield Street, Kings Cross, London. [3] His parents were Charles George Williams, who managed a hairdressers in the Kings Cross area, and Louisa Alexandra ( née Morgan), who worked in the salon. Charles was a Methodist who had "a hatred of loose morals and effeminacy", according to Barry Took, Williams's biographer. Charles thought the theatre immoral and effeminate, although his son aspired to be involved in the profession from an early age. [4] Between 1935 and 1956, Williams lived with his parents in a flat above his father's barber shop at 57 Marchmont Street, Bloomsbury. Williams had a half-sister, Alice Patricia "Pat", born in 1923 before his mother had met Charles and three years before Kenneth was born. [5] Obituaries". Britishcomedy.org.uk. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015 . Retrieved 30 June 2014.

Over the years Williams wrote to the couple, who still live together, on around 150 occasions, and all his notes and letters have been preserved. Williams, a trained engraver, worked as a map-maker during the war and listed calligraphy among his hobbies in Who's Who, but his astonishing skill has confounded even Nicolas Barker, a former handwriting expert at the British Museum, who has looked at the diaries. Kenneth, full of contradictions,was angry with himself for letting his career be reduced to the chat-show circuit, yet recognised - and relished - his own skill in the genre. After recording one of his appearances on Parkinson early in the evening he would come on to our house to view the transmission, providing a running commentary on his own performance. ‘That’s good, that’s very good. Don’t I look a dish? Lovely tag to that story.’ WILLIAMS, KENNETH (1926–1988)". English Heritage. Archived from the original on 4 May 2014 . Retrieved 4 May 2014. The World of Kenneth Williams 1970, Decca SPA 64. Stereo edition of recordings from the 1950s and 1960s.