Richard Ashcroft psychedelic music and drugs. They also became a part of the Britpop movement. The band split in 1995, and around this time Ashcroft wrote a collection of songs he intended to release as his first solo album. However, by 1997 he had changed his mind and asked McCabe to return (alongside new member Tong), reforming The Verve and releasing the very successful album "Urban Hymns". Ashcroft was at the forefront of the band's popularity, receiving an Ivor Novello Award for his songwriting and being referred to by the press as "the unmistakable face of the Number One rock band in
Peggy Ashcroft desire to become a professional actress. Ashcroft was determined, however, and at the age of sixteen, she enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama, run by Elsie Fogerty, from whom her mother had taken lessons some years before. The school's emphasis was on the voice and elegant diction, which did not appeal to Ashcroft or to her fellow pupil Laurence Olivier. She learned more from reading "My Life in Art" by Constantin Stanislavski, the influential director of the Moscow Art Theatre. While still a student, Ashcroft made her professional stage debut at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in a