Anthony Quayle - Early Life

Early Life

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. 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. He was an aide to the Governor of Gibraltar 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.

Read more about this topic:  Anthony Quayle

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:

    The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.
    Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

    It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.
    William Cobbett (1762–1835)