Emlyn Williams: A Life

Although in "George" and "Emlyn", Emlyn Williams wrote two of the finest of all English theatrical autobiographies, they take the story no further than the author's 30th year when he was on the threshold of his first great success, "Night Must Fall". There were another 50 years to go: writing plays such as "The Corn is Green", in which he immortalized his inspired teacher, Miss Sarah Grace Cooke, and acting, not least in re-creating Dylan Thomas and Charles Dickens in his own one-man shows. James Harding, biographer of James Agate, Gerald de Maurier and, most recently, George Robey, not only completes the story, but brings fresh light to bear on incidents in Williams's early life, which, according to Noel Coward, was "the Cinderella story of all time". Welsh was his first language and when he broke out of the narrow, poverty-stricken, chapel-haunted atmosphere of his native village, it was a liberation. Similarities with another acting genius from Wales, Richard Burton, whom Williams encouraged, abound. James Harding's "Life", based on Williams's own papers, is a story of "a strange and interesting man", as John Mortimer summed him up.