Ian Kelly

Ian Kelly is an actor and writer. He has written several historical biographies, including Casanova (Sunday Times Biography of the Year, 2008), Mr Foote’s Other Leg; Comedy, Tragedy and Murder in Georgian London (Winner, Theatre Book of the Year, 2013), Beau Brummell (shortlisted for the Marsh Commonwealth Biography Prize), Cooking for Kings, A Life of Antonin Carême (Radio 4 Book of the Week), and the life of Vivienne Westwood, co-written with Dame Vivienne.

As a dramatist, Ian’s stage adaptation of Mr Foote’s Other Leg was premiered at Hampstead Theatre in 2015 in a production directed by Richard Eyre starring Simon Russell Beale, and his adaptation of the Carême biography Cooking for Kings ran Off-Broadway in 2004 and 2006. Beau Brummell was adapted as a BBC film with Simon Bent, starring Hugh Bonneville and James Purefoy.

As an actor, film work includes Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I and Part II as Hermione’s father, Howards End, Creation, In Love and War, Closed and the Russian films Admiral Kolchak and Alexei Balabanov’s War (Best Actor Nomination, Montreal Film Festival).

Theatre work includes The Pitmen Painters (National Theatre, Broadway, West End and Newcastle Live; Performance of the Year, NE Culture Awards), A Busy Day (West End, Bristol Old Vic), Arcadia (Manchester), Cooking for Kings and Beau Brummell (US premieres, Off-Broadway), Henry V and Twelfth Night with the English Shakespeare Company and seasons with, amongst others, Theatr Clwyd and Salisbury Playhouse.

Television work includes Downton Abbey, Sensitive Skin, In a Land of Plenty, Cold Lazarus, Silent Witness, Drop the Dead Donkey, Time Trumpet, Catherine Cookson’s The Moth, Just William and Underworld.