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JOHN GIELGUD
Actor
Talking about playing the classics, including Hamlet
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JUDI DENCH
Actor
Reflects on childhood and deciding to be an actress |
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Andrew Motion b1952
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Andrew Motion was born in London and educated at Oxford University, where he won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry. After leaving Oxford, Motion became a lecturer at Hull University (1976-1981), publishing his first collection of poetry in 1977. At Hull he met the poet Philip Larkin, whom he came to regard as "possibly the finest expository lyrical poet". Motion won a Whitbread Award for A Writer's Life, his biography of Larkin, in 1994. When Motion was 16, his mother was involved in a riding accident which left her in a comatose state for 10 years before her death in hospital. His mother's death was one reason why he became a writer, and he often brought her into his work. "It was another way of keeping her alive," he has said. One of his pieces about her, "The Letter", won the 1981 Arvon International Poetry competition. After leaving Hull, Motion became editor of Poetry Review and poetry editor with the publishers Chatto & Windus. In 1982, he co-edited The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry with Blake Morrison. In 1984, he published Dangerous Play 1974-1984, which brought together poems written over the previous decade. His biography, The Lamberts: George, Constant & Kit (1986), was well received. In 1991, he analysed his marriage to journalist Jan Dalley in Love in a Life (1991), and in the same year published a novel, Famous for the Creatures. In 1995, he succeeeded Malcolm Bradbury as professor of creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Motion is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was appointed Poet Laureate in 1998.
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KEY WORKS INCLUDE:
The Pleasure Steamers (1977)
Secret Narratives (1983)
Dangerous Play 1974-1984 (1984)
The biography - The Lamberts: George, Constant & Kit (1986)
Love in a Life (1991)
The biography - A Writer's Life (1993)
The Price of Everything (1994)
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