Kenneth Williams - Life and Career

Life and Career

Kenneth Charles Williams was born on 22 February 1926 in Bingfield Street, King's Cross, London, the son of Louisa ("Lou" or "Louie") and Charles Williams, a barber. Williams had a half-sister, Alice Patricia, born illegitimately before Louie had met Charlie Williams. He was educated at Lyulph Stanley School, later becoming apprenticed as a draughtsman to a mapmaker. He joined the Army in 1944 at 18. As part of the Royal Engineers survey section in Bombay; he first performed on stage in the Combined Services Entertainment alongside Stanley Baxter and Peter Nichols. He was a voracious reader able to quote poems or literary extracts from memory. Excerpts from the diaries he kept as an adult show that he adored his supportive and theatrical mother but despised his homophobic, morose and selfish father.