Norman Shelley (16 February 1903 – 22 August 1980) was an English actor, best known for his work in radio, in particular for the BBC's Children's Hour. He also had a recurring role as Colonel Danby in the long-running radio soap opera The Archers.
Perhaps Shelley's single best-known role was as Winnie-the-Pooh in The Children's Hour adaptations of A. A. Milne's stories; for many British people of the mid-20th-century, his is the definitive voice of Pooh. Other roles for The Children's Hour included Dr. Watson (opposite Carleton Hobbs as Holmes) in a series of adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories; Toad in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows; and the role of Dennis the Dachshund in the specially written Toytown series. Shelley also played the parts of Gandalf and Tom Bombadil in the 1955-6 radio adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. In the 1973 BBC television series Jack the Ripper Shelley played Detective Constable Walter Dew.
Read more about Norman Shelley: Life and Career, Churchill Impersonation, Selected Filmography
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—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, a wisecrack made to Huxley College’s outgoing president (1932)
“That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)