Welsh actor and playwright Emlyn Williams was BOTD in 1905. Born in Mostyn to a working-class family, he was a gifted student, winning a scholarship to study at a grammar school. He was saved from life as a coal miner by his French teacher Sarah Cooke, who mentored his education and helped him win a scholarship to Oxford University. He had a nervous breakdown at university, due to a failed relationship with a (male?) student, and was encouraged by Cooke to write as therapy. He began writing and performing plays, moving to London after graduation where he worked for a repertory theatre company. He wrote and starred in a series of highly successful West End thrillers, notably Night Must Fall, playing a psychopathic murderer. His 1938 play The Corn is Green, based on his childhood relationship with Miss Cooke, became highly successful, and was adapted into a film starring Bette Davis. His 1944 play The Druid’s Rest starred the then-unknown actor Richard Burton, who became a lifelong friend. During the 1940s, Williams appeared in a number of high-profile British films including Jamaica Inn, Major Barbara, I Accuse! and The Wreck of the Mary Deare, working alongside Charles Laughton, Gary Cooper, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson and Wendy Hiller. In later life, he became famous for writing, directing and starring in one-man shows playing writers Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas and Saki, undertaking several world tours. He maintained a public profile into the 1960s, starring in Bryan Forbes’ kitchen sink drama The L-Shaped Room and writing the successful true crime novel Beyond Belief, based on real-life “Moors Murderers” Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Williams married actress Molly Shan in 1935, with whom he had two sons. He pursued relationships with men throughout his life, including the actor John Gielgud and theatre critic Albert Williams. He died in 1987 aged 81.