Earlier than he launched into his profession as a tv director, Roy Battersby and I met when he forged me as The Ghost in his formidable “black denims” manufacturing of Hamlet at College Faculty London. It went on to be a finalist within the 1960 Sunday Instances nationwide pupil drama awards.
The eventual movie and tv producer Tony Garnett, then an aspiring actor, performed the Dane, partly in a bid to be a focus for the BBC producer Peter Dews, who was getting ready his groundbreaking Shakespeare collection An Age of Kings (additionally 1960).
It labored: Garnett carried a spear for Dews, and Roy started his profession as an uncompromisingly radical tv director. Our paths solely sometimes crossed thereafter – I grew to become curator of the Nationwide Movie and TV Archive on the BFI. However Battersby, Garnett and I shared a cheerful reunion at a memorial celebration of David Rose, the founding father of Channel 4’s Movie 4, in 2017.
