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I'd like to say a few things about my memories
of working on this particular story for Doctor Who.
I was a very young man at the time,
and it was a tremendous chance for me
to play Richard the Lionheart, for goodness sake.
And I was very young, and I was extraordinarily flattered
to play someone who was such a great hero
of the English nation and all that.
I remember Douglas Canfield, I do remember getting the part.
I was in the garden, whatever I was doing, I don't know.
My wife came running out,
Julian, Julian, Douglas Canfield's on,
Douglas Canfield, yes, he wants you to do something on telly.
Oh, good, great, thank you.
And there was Douglas on the phone saying,
would I play Richard the Lionheart?
And I was thrilled to bits, and actually he asked me
to play Richard the Lionheart again in the film of Ivanhoe,
many, many years later when I was certainly not a young man,
mmm, youngish.
So Douglas and I were very close together on Richard's.
I remember the garden, the corner of the garden,
it was a tiny little garden we had in South London,
the corner of the garden I was actually poking around in
when Douglas rang.
You know those memory things that happen to you.
I can't remember the flowers that were there though,
and all actually what I was doing, anyway.
It was a very happy engagement, generally speaking,
mostly because of the actors,
some of whom I met for the first time
and some not for the first time.
And I remember being very impressed by the way
the sets and costumes were arranged.
At that time, Doctor Who, as we know, was in its early years,
and they weren't spending too much on it, frankly.
And they managed to construct really very, well I thought,
interesting and persuasive sets, settings.
And considering we did the whole thing in the studio,
there was no location work,
I think that really Douglas did awfully well
in the design of the team and the costume people.
We were very comfortable in our clothes, I remember.
And the swords and things seemed to sort of work.
Though I think from some of the pictures you might see
we look a little bit gauche, but we didn't feel gauche at the time.
I think it's probably a matter of the period and the time and all that.
I suppose the reason I got the part was because of my history beforehand.
I've done a lot of Shakespeare, I've done a great deal more since.
But a very famous series, which some of you may remember,
called An Age of Kings, which was Shakespeare's history plays
through from Richard II through to Richard III.
And I played a lot of parts in that, I was part of that repertory company.
And I think that Douglas had seen a lot of that.
And I played one particular king who was not unlike Edward IV,
who was not unlike Richard I.
So that was probably the key.
Of course I had a false beard and all that, which was stuck on for me.
Extraordinarily uncomfortable.
And I did wear my signet ring, which was a good thing to do,
my own signet ring, which was nice.
The actors are the people really that I've continued to like very much.
Maureen O'Brien became a very good friend through that series.
We don't see each other very often, but when we do we delight in each other.
And it's a very, very nice relationship.
Jean Marsh, of course, I did know from beforehand.
And we were simply delighted to play brother and sister in it.
And it was a very interesting story.
I remember we had to play down the possible incestuous side.
We wanted to play that because it is very strongly held theory
that there was an incestuous relationship between them.
But it was at a time when television was a children's television, etc., etc.
We couldn't do that. But we didn't mind.
We played what we had. And she's remained a friend.
She is now the best friend of my first wife,
who was the one who called me from the garden,
the actress Eileen Atkins, who I'm sure a lot of you will remember.
And she works a lot in America now, Jean.
We see each other quite often, and we're very friendly.
There were other actors on that.
Jacqueline, of course, Hill, we got very friendly at the time.
But then she went and married Alvin Rakoff, the Canadian television director,
and went off to live in Toronto,
who I met, actually, about six years ago when I was out there making a movie,
and we had a dinner, and that was jolly nice.
Bernard Kaye, I didn't meet again until a Stratford season
with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford in 1992, 1996, was it?
I can't remember.
We were both in the same company when I was playing Henry IV,
and he was playing Glendower, the wild Welsh wizard.
And actually he went on to take over another part that I'd done
in An Inspector Calls, which is a very successful production of that priestly play,
which is still on in London now.
I think actually Bernard at the moment is playing it,
though the time span for the purposes of this interview is not interesting, is it?
We're talking in the year 2000.
And he's remained a very nice acquaintance.
Tony Cawnter I also have worked with several times since then,
and he's most memorable as one of the most amusing men I've ever met in my life.
Also, he's an absolutely screaming film buff.
He knows everything about movies.
I mean, he would make light of this conversation I'm having with you now,
because he would fill in on everything, the cameraman, the lighting person,
and that costume person, and all the other actors and people who I couldn't remember,
he would fill in.
So Tony Cawnter is a very happy memory.
Walter Randall, very wild,
and he used to run a nightclub in London, I remember, down in Chelsea.
And we used to go down there and have tremendously good times,
because the drinks were cheap when Walter let us have them.
So we enjoyed that very much.
It was a very happy time.
Bill Hartnell, of course, you'll all be wanting to know about Bill, was a tricky chap.
He was, as we know, the founder member of Doctor Who.
He created Doctor Who, and some will say remains the best presentation,
the most interesting character of the many that there have been.
He was not very friendly, I have to say, to the visiting actors,
but he was a great perfectionist.
This is probably the reason.
And if you didn't quite get right exactly what he needed,
and what he thought was needed for the whole thing, not just for him,
then he was very ratty and irritable.
On the other hand, suddenly he would smile and accept you into his world,
and you felt that you'd been given a great big present.
But I would say that, generally speaking, my experience with Bill was quite rough, really.
Well, I was playing Richard the Lionheart, after all!
Richard Plantagenet was born in Oxfordshire, England, in the year 1157,
the third son of King Henry II.
He was a child of Aquitaine, a part of southern France.
His native language, therefore, was not English,
and throughout his life he spoke little of it.
Known to history as Coeur de Lion, or Lionheart, because of his bravery in battle.
He is epitomised as a great warrior and a noble king.
In reality, Richard had little time for England,
and spent only six months of his ten-year reign on English soil.
In 1187, Richard learned of the tragic loss at Hattin,
where the Crusaders had lost Jerusalem to the Saracen leader Almaric al-Nasir Saladin Yusuf,
known to Europeans as Saladin.
Upon the death of his father, Henry II, in 1189,
Richard was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey, London.
Richard had only one ambition, to lead a crusade against Saladin and recapture Jerusalem.
Richard stayed in England only long enough to make the necessary arrangements to fund the crusade.
To this end, he sold everything that could be sold,
manors, castles, towns, privileges, sheriffdoms, and other public offices.
Richard was in a hurry, and is reported to have said,
I would sell London if only I could find someone rich enough to buy it.
He imposed a hefty tax on the English people called a Saladin Tithe,
as a means of aiding his war effort.
Richard sailed from Dover, and was soon en route to the Holy Lands.