Star of stage and screen, Sir John Gielgud has today (27 April) been honoured with an English Heritage blue plaque at his former home in London. The plaque was unveiled by Gielgud’s long-time friend and colleague, Dame Judi Dench, at number 16 Cowley Street in Westminster. This brown brick Georgian townhouse was Gielgud’s home for thirty-one years, from May 1945 to February 1976 – a period that encompassed some of the most important moments of his life, including his knighthood for services to the theatre in 1953.

Professor Ronald Hutton, chairman of the Blue Plaques Panel, said: “Sir John Gielgud was one of the finest English actors of his generation. Beloved by his peers, he is remembered for his complete mastery of Shakespeare and is thought by many to have been the greatest Hamlet of the twentieth century. Gielgud was always particularly fond of his house on Cowley Street and I am delighted to celebrate his long and varied career with a new English Heritage blue plaque here today.”

Dame Judi Dench said: “I worked with John Gielgud in The Cherry Orchard, when I played Anya and he was Gaev. The director, Michel Saint-Denis, gave me a very hard time and almost destroyed my confidence. But at one rehearsal, as we exited at the end of Act 1 Sir John said: “Oh, if you’d been doing that for me in one of my productions, I’d have been delighted.” I was devoted to him for evermore.

“If you want to know how to speak Shakespeare, Sir John and Frank Sinatra will teach you. One presented the whole arc of a speech, and the other presented the whole arc of a song.”

Born in South Kensington on 14th April 1904, Arthur John Gielgud made his professional debut in 1923, as the Poet Butterfly in Karel Kapek’s The Insect Play at the Regent. He worked almost constantly from that moment until what was to be his final role, in Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe at the age of 96. His domination of the British stage lasted for most of the twentieth century and he was one of only a handful of people to receive an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony. An accomplished film actor too, Gielgud appeared in over a hundred films, including Becket (1964), Arthur (1981) and Prospero’s Books (1991). His long career, which spanned over 75 years and included acclaimed performances in plays by Wilde, Chekhov and Sheridan, and, later, Harold Pinter and Alan Bennett. This longevity is referenced in the 1986 cult film Withnail and I, when, complaining about the lack of work for actors, Richard E Grant’s Withnail snaps: ‘Haven’t seen Gielgud down the labour exchange. Why doesn’t he retire?’

As well as many theatrical triumphs, Gielgud’s time in Cowley Street encompassed a darker period around the time of his arrest in 1953 for a homosexual offence. This, among other high-profile cases, was an impetus for the decriminalisation of male homosexuality fifty years ago this year, in 1967.

The English Heritage London Blue Plaques scheme is generously supported by David Pearl and members of the public.