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In 1992, Tilda Swinton portrayed the titular role in Orlando, written and directed by Sally Potter and based on the book Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf. The topic of gender roles and the societal expectations attached to them has always been prominent in the public discourse. Orlando provides much more than just a commentary on the rigid societal structure that pertains to these roles, but also on the ambiguity that exists between them.

In a narrative that spans multiple centuries, Orlando brings the audience along with them on a journey that will thoroughly deconstruct the nature of gender. Not just as it relates to the character, but the way in which it's presented in society, how males and females are expected to behave, and their treatment. Supplementing the journey through time and its exploration of the topic of gender is an immaculate presentation and set designs that make it one...

Glinwood worked with Roman Polanski, Jeremy Thomas, Karel Reisz and Terry Jones.

UK industry veteran Terry Glinwood has died aged 82 following complications from surgery for a minor complaint.

Glinwood’s career spanned fifty years as a producer and sales executive during which time he worked closely with some of the European industry’s leading figures.

He entered the business in the 1960s as a production controller working on Roman Polanski films Repulsion and Cul-De-Sac.

In the 1970’s he would work closely with fellow-producers Ned Sherrin and Beryl Vertue and director Bob Kellett on a string of UK comedies including Up Pompeii and The Alf Garnett Saga as well with UK producer John Heyman and Grease and Saturday Night Fever producer Robert Stigwood.

In the same decade Glinwood struck up a fertile collaboration with Rpc boss Jeremy Thomas for whom he would work in a sales and financing capacity on Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Last Emperor and [link...

Alex pays a fond return revisit to 1960s classic TV series, The Avengers...

Stylish crime fighting, despicable evil masterminds, a bowler-hatted old Etonian gentleman spy and a series of beautiful leather cat-suited, kinky-booted, no-nonsense heroines. The Avengers had all this and more. What began as a monochrome tape series in January 1961 ran the whole of the Sixties, becoming a colourful slice of period hokum, full of flair, wit and sophistication, yet with its tongue firmly in its cheek.

Always the perfect gentleman, John Steed was played by Patrick Macnee. Originally billed second to the late Ian Hendry, Macnee was still playing Steed over 15 years later when he was teamed with the youthful duo of Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt for The New Avengers in 1976. In the 1998 film, the role of Steed was given to Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman played Emma Peel. I will say no more about the film.

Comedian and actor best known for the satirical television show Bremner, Bird and Fortune

John Fortune, who has died aged 74 after a long illness, was a distinguished member of the Oxbridge generation of brainy comedians who turned British entertainment inside out in the early 1960s, along with his friend, college contemporary and writing partner, John Bird, as well as Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, David Frost, Eleanor Bron and John Wells.

From his earliest days on Ned Sherrin's Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, the successor in 1964-65 to the satirical television magazine That Was the Week That Was, through to the comedy shows with Rory Bremner in the 1990s and beyond, he was a fixture of barely surprised indifference, with a wonderful line in deflationary, logical understatement. Tall and gangly, with a warm and ready smile but a performance default mode of aghast,...

Tributes have been paid to Sir David Frost, who has died suddenly at the age of 74.

During his lengthy career, Frost was at the forefront of major changes in broadcasting and used his skill, creativity and persistence to provide viewers with some of the most memorable moments in television - and in some cases, world history.

Digital Spy looks back at six ways in which Sir David Frost made his mark on broadcast media below.

1. That Was the Week That Was (TW3)

That Was the Week That Was - or TW3, as it was often known - made politicians and the establishment fair satirical game in the early 1960s at a time when the Profumo affair was dominating headlines. Commissioned by the BBC, Frost was chosen to anchor the programme by its creator Ned Sherrin.

TW3 lampooned the class system, Britain's waning influence on the world stage (as in the clip below) and foreign affairs,...

My mother Pat Ashton, who has died aged 82, was an actor for over four decades. Probably her most important TV role was that of Annie, wife of a burglar (Bob Hoskins) who comes out of prison to find that his old friend (John Thaw) has moved in, in Thick As Thieves (1974). When Yorkshire TV declined a second series, the writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais took the idea to the BBC, where it was developed into the much-loved series Porridge.

Pat was born and raised in Wood Green, north London. During her early years, the piano was the focus of entertainment at home, with her brother Richard playing all the popular songs of the day. Her grandmother had been a trapeze artist, performing in front of the tsar in Russia, and Pat quickly became fascinated with music hall, learned to tap-dance from an early age and went on to...

Director of British comedy films in the tradition of saucy seaside postcards

During the 1970s, British cinema produced dozens of sex comedies, of which the director Bob Kellett, who has died aged 84, was something of a master. Kellett's films superseded the Carry On series, whose innuendo had become smuttier and less funny, and predated the more vulgar Confessions movies. They were in the tradition of Donald McGill's saucy seaside postcards, which George Orwell had extolled as being "symptomatically important as a sort of saturnalia, a harmless rebellion against virtue".

Kellett, who was born in Lancaster, went to Bedford school, where he was captain of the rowing team. After school, he had various jobs, including growing and selling orchids, selling encyclopedias, and writing for an advertising agency, before entering the film industry in the early 50s. After working on several features as script editor for the producer Ian Dalrymple at Pinewood Studios,...

Director and team behind Olympic opening ceremony scoop prize, Nick Payne becomes youngest ever playwright to take the award for best play, and Hattie Morahan triumphs over Cate Blanchett

The team behind the Olympic opening ceremony, led by director Danny Boyle, was honoured at the Evening Standard theatre awards on Sunday night, winning the second Beyond Theatre award, which "celebrates theatricality outside the confines of the auditorium".

Boyle was presented the award by cyclist Victoria Pendleton at the ceremony, which took place at the Savoy Hotel in London, for an event that the Evening Standard's editor, Sarah Sands, said "managed to find a way of showing us who we are" as a nation.

Elsewhere, it was Nicholas Hytner's night, as the National theatre's artistic director, who recently teamed up with Boyle to spearhead a campaign against arts-funding cuts outside of London, scooped both the Lebedev special award and best...

Young writers James Graham and Nick Payne vie with Caryl Churchill, while actor Hattie Morahan goes up against Cate Blanchett as Young Vic gains five nominations

Young playwrights James Graham and Nick Payne will compete with the legendary Caryl Churchill for best new play at this year's Evening Standard theatre awards.

Churchill, who won her first Evening Standard award 25 years ago for Serious Money, is shortlisted for Love and Information at the Royal Court, London, while Graham, 30, is up for political thriller This House, and Payne, 28, Constellations, currently previewing in the West End.

By a strange quirk of fate, Graham and Payne are younger than two of the nominees for the Charles Wintour most promising playwright award: actor Lolita Chakrabarti, 43, and screenwriter John Hodge, 47, both of whom saw their first plays staged this year in Red Velvet and Collaborators respectively. That category is completed by Tom Wells, author of The Kitchen Sink.

Veteran British actor Sir Michael Gambon was honored for his longstanding stage career at the annual London Evening Standard Theatre Awards on Sunday, November 28 night. The "Harry Potter" star made his debut in the West End in the 1960s and has carried on appearing in live productions while working in films - and he landed the prestigious Lebedev Special Award to mark his career on the stage.

Founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company Sir Peter Hall was also handed a special honor - the Golden Seagull award - for his contribution to world theatre. Nancy Carroll was honored with The Natasha Richardson Best Actress award for her role as Joan in Terence Rattigan's "After the Dance", and received the trophy from the late star's husband, Liam Neeson.

The Best Actor prize went to Rory Kinnear for two Shakespearean roles, as Hamlet and Angelo in "Measure for Measure", while Best...

Veteran British actor Sir Michael Gambon was honoured for his longstanding stage career at the annual London Evening Standard Theatre Awards on Sunday night.

The Harry Potter star made his debut in the West End in the 1960s and has carried on appearing in live productions while working in films - and he landed the prestigious Lebedev Special Award to mark his career on the stage.

Founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company Sir Peter Hall was also handed a special honour - the Golden Seagull award - for his contribution to world theatre.

Nancy Carroll was honoured with The Natasha Richardson Best Actress award for her role as Joan in Terence Rattigan's After the Dance, and received the trophy from the late star's husband, Liam Neeson.

The Best Actor prize went to Rory Kinnear for two Shakespearean roles, as Hamlet and Angelo in Measure for Measure, while Best Director was awarded to Howard Davies for his work on The White Guard and Arthur Miller's All My Sons.

Stephen Sondheim's Passion, which was staged to mark his 80th birthday earlier this year, fought off competition from Legally Blonde and Les Miserables to win the Ned Sherrin award for Best Musical, and Best Play went to Bruce Norris' racial drama Clybourne Park.

The Editor's Shooting Star award went to Daniel Kaluuya for his performance in boxing drama Sucker Punch.

Deputy Editor of the London Evening Standard Sarah Sands says, "This year's winners illustrate the astonishing range of talent drawn to the stage. London theatre is, by far, the best in the world, and the Evening Standard is proud of its deep associations with it."...

Assembled ~4/2005

That he was born is just one of the many undeniable facts about the life of the late Douglas Adams - author, humorist, raconteur, speaker, and thinker (although it should be noted that, on at least one parallel Earth, Mr. Adams was born a spring-toed lemur with a predilection for grassy fields and the works of Byron - a poetic lemur whose work was not terribly springy).

Another fact which comes to mind is that, of the 7 novels he wrote in his all-too-brief lifetime, by far the most popular is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its four sequels - which make for a fine trilogy if you’re somewhat numerically impaired. Please don’t take this as a slight against Adams’s other novels, featuring detective Dirk Gently (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and its sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul), as they...

More familiar with life on the fringes of British cinema, director Sally Potter finds herself the subject of a BFI retrospective. But she has no interest in looking back

In the late 1980s, Sally Potter was scratching around for funding to make Orlando, the Virginia Woolf adaptation widely considered her finest film, as well as a formative moment in the career of its star, Tilda Swinton. Potter's friend, the visionary director Michael Powell, had secured her a 10-minute meeting with Martin Scorsese, in which she hoped to convince him to extend a helping hand to a fellow maverick.

"Tilda and I went with our producer to meet Scorsese in New York," says the 60-year-old Potter, seated at a table in her east London office. "We walked into his place and nearly fainted with admiration. He then proceeded to spend the entire 10 minutes talking about how incredibly difficult life was for...