Samuel West Samuel West Samuel Alexander Joseph West (born 19 June 1966) is a third-generation English actor, theatre director and voice actor. He has directed on stage and radio, and worked as an actor across theatre, film, television and radio. He often appears as reciter with orchestras and performed at the Last Night of the Proms in 2002. He has narrated several documentary series, including five for the BBC centred on events related to the Second World War. West was born in London, the elder son of actors Prunella Scales and Timothy West, and the grandson of the actor Lockwood West. He
John Caird (director) moved back to England in 1959 to Oxford, where he attended Magdalen College School from 1959–1967. He studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School from 1967 to 1969. Caird worked as an actor and stage manager at various English repertory theatres and in London's West End before embarking on his directorial career at Contact Theatre, in Manchester in 1973. Caird was an Associate Director of Contact Theatre for two years from 1973–75 where he directed plays by Shakespeare, Chris Bond, John Osborne, James Saunders, Samuel Beckett, wrote and acted in Theatre in Education programmes for Manchester's schools and