Charles Hawtrey (actor, born 1914) asking were children, which angered their parents. Kenneth Williams recorded a visit to Deal in Kent where Hawtrey owned a house full of old brass bedsteads that the eccentric actor had hoarded, believing that "one day he would make a great deal of money from them". Hawtrey spent most of his life living with his mother, who suffered senile dementia in later years. Another anecdote recounted by Williams describes how during the filming of "Carry On Teacher" Joan Sims cried out to Hawtrey that his mother's handbag had caught fire after her cigarette ash fell into it. Without batting an
Kenneth Williams abandoned Christianity following discussions with the poet Philip Larkin. Williams had been a Methodist, though he spent much of his life struggling with Christianity's teachings on homosexuality. "Kenneth Williams Unseen" by Wes Butters and Russell Davies, the first Williams biography in 15 years, was published in October 2008. An authorised biography, "Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams", by Christopher Stevens, was published in October 2010. This drew for the first time on the full Williams archive of diaries and letters, which had been stored in a London bank for 15 years following publication of edited extracts. The biography notes