Welsh actor, singer, composer and dramatist Ivor Novello was BOTD in 1893. Born David Ivor Davies in Cardiff, he won a scholarship to Oxford where he sung in the college choir. He showed an early ability for songwriting, publishing his first song when he was 15. In 1913, he and his mother moved into a flat above the Strand Theatre, which became his London home for the rest of his life. His first major songwriting success was the 1914 war ballad Keep the Home Fires Burning, which became enormously popular during World War One. He contributed songs to a number of West End shows, eventually writing a series of successful musical comedies. In the late 1920s he turned to film acting, starring in two silent films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, The Lodger and Downhill. His handsome profile and air of mystery made him Britain’s most popular male film star, swooned over by women and men alike. He continued his success writing his own plays, with hits including The Rat, The Truth Game, A Symphony in Two Flats and Fresh Fields. Lured to Hollywood, he found little to do except write “Me Tarzan, You Jane” for Tarzan the Ape Man starring Johnny Weissmuller. Returning to Britain, he starred in Hitchcock’s sound-film remake of The Lodger. Its unexpected failure drove Novello back to the theatre, writing and starring in lavish West End musicals, including Glamorous Night, Careless Rapture, The Dancing Years and Gay’s the Word. Relatively openly gay for his time, he had a long-term relationship with Bobbie Andrews for over 30 years, while clocking up an astonishing number of lovers, including Siegfried Sassoon, Winston Churchill and Laurence Olivier. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1951, aged 58. Among many posthumous tributes, the Ivor Novello Awards for excellence in songwriting were named in his honour. He has been portrayed frequently on screen, notably by Jeremy Northam in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park and by Jeremy Davies as a sexually voracious puff-adder in Terence Davies‘ 2021 Sassoon biopic Benediction.