Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh (born 10 December 1960) is an actor, director, producer and screenwriter.
He has directed or starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V (1989) (for which he was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996) (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay), Love's Labour's Lost (2000), and As You Like It (2006).
He formed the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company in April 2015, launching with a season of five shows at London's Garrick Theatre from October 2015 - November 2016.
Michael Bray
Michael Bray trained at RADA and worked as an actor on stage and screen, before moving into writing and directing for television and film. His films as writer/director include The Sea Change, starring Ray Winstone, which was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He has taught screen acting at many leading drama schools, directed hundreds of students' final-year films, and is currently Course Leader at Drama Centre, Central Saint Martins, part of the University of the Arts London. His book So You Want To Act On Screen? is published by Nick Hern Books.
Howard Brenton
Howard Brenton was born in Portsmouth in 1942. His many plays include Christie in Love (Portable Theatre, 1969); Revenge (Theatre Upstairs, 1969); Magnificence (Royal Court Theatre,1973); The Churchill Play (Nottingham Playhouse, 1974, and twice revived by the RSC, 1978 and 1988); Bloody Poetry (FocoNovo, 1984, and Royal Court Theatre, 1987); Weapons of Happiness (National Theatre, Evening Standard Award, 1976); Epsom Downs (Joint Stock Theatre, 1977); Sore Throats (RSC,1978); The Romans in Britain (National Theatre, 1980, revived at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, 2006); Thirteenth Night (RSC,1981); The Genius (1983), Greenland (1988) and Berlin Bertie (1992), all presented by the Royal Court; Kit’s Play (RADA Jerwood Theatre, 2000); Paul (National Theatre, 2005); In Extremis (Shakespeare’s Globe, 2006 and 2007); Never So Good (National Theatre, 2008); The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists adapted from the novel by Robert Tressell (Liverpool Everyman and Chichester Festival Theatre, 2010); Anne Boleyn (Shakespeare’s Globe, 2010 and 2011); 55 Days (Hampstead Theatre, 2012); #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei (Hampstead Theatre, 2013); The Guffin (NT Connections, 2013); Drawing the Line (Hampstead Theatre, 2013); Doctor Scroggy's War (Shakespeare's Globe, 2014); Lawrence After Arabia (Hampstead Theatre, 2016); The Blinding Light (Jermyn Street Theatre, 2017), The Shadow Factory (NST City, Southampton, 2018), Jude (Hampstead Theatre, 2019) and Cancelling Socrates (Jermyn Street Theatre, London, 2022).
Collaborations with other writers include Brassneck (with David Hare, Nottingham Playhouse, 1972); Pravda (with David Hare, National Theatre, Evening Standard Award, 1985) and Moscow Gold (with Tariq Ali, RSC, 1990).
Versions of classics include The Life of Galileo (1980) and Danton's Death (1982), both for the National Theatre; Goethe's Faust (1995/6) for the RSC; a new version of Danton's Death for the National Theatre (2010); and versions of Strindberg's Dances of Death (Gate Theatre, 2013), Miss Julie (Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, & Jermyn Street Theatre, London, 2017) and Creditors (Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, & Jermyn Street Theatre, London, 2019).
He wrote thirteen episodes of the BBC1 drama series Spooks (2001–05, BAFTA Best Drama Series, 2003).
Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) was the eldest of the three Brontë sisters and is best remembered for her novel Jane Eyre, now considered a classic of English literature.
Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë (1818-1848) is best remembered for her only novel Wuthering Heights. She was the second eldest of the three Brontë sisters - between Charlotte and Anne - who spent their entire lives in Haworth, North Yorkshire.