Anthony Quayle

Anthony Quayle, CBE (7 September 1913 – 20 October 1989) was an English actor and director. Quayle was born in Ainsdale, Southport, Lancashire to a Manx family. He was educated at the private Rugby School and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. After appearing in music hall, he joined the Old Vic in 1932. During World War II, he was an army officer and was made one of the area commanders of the Auxiliary Units.[1] Later he joined the Special Operations Executive and served as a liaison officer with the partisans in Albania (reportedly, his service with the SOE seriously affected him, and he never felt comfortable talking about it). He described his experiences in a fictionalised form in Eight Hours from England.[2] He was an aide to the Governor of Gibraltar[3] at the time of the air crash of General Władysław Sikorski's aircraft on 4 July 1943. He fictionalised his Gibraltar experience in his second novel On Such a Night, published by Heinemann.