Trivia

He served in the RAF during WWII. He gained stage experience at the Old Vic and in repertory theatre. He went on to make more than 80 movies, mostly in character parts, many of them unsympathetic. He was also an authority on the Boer War.

President of a society for the emancipation of the Untouchables caste in India.

Did not enjoy the long rehearsal process and virtually abandoned the theatre to work solely in cinema and television.

Was a friend of Patrick McGoohan during the 1960s.

All three marriages ended in divorce. He had three sons and two daughters.

Besides Patrick McGoohan, he was the only other actor to appear in the finales of both Secret Agent (1964) and The Prisoner (1967).

Was a close friend of Peter O'Toole.

Theatrical debut in 1937 at the Festival Theatre in Cambridge as Cinna the Poet in 'Julius Caesar'.

Was cast as "Berkley" in Where Eagles Dare (1968), but was replaced by Peter Barkworth.

The Welshman was encouraged to drop the "s" from his surname for professional reasons, because it sounded too British.

He claimed to have taught Peter Sellers to speak in a Swansea accent for his role as a Welsh librarian in "Only Two Can Play" - a claim he did not make until some time after Sellers's death. Although many Welsh people were impressed by the accuracy of the accent Sellers used. they also wondered why the accent Griffith himself used was so much less accurate.

Avidly supported Sinn Fein.

His interest in the Boer War began when he visited South Africa to play Oberon in Tyrone Guthrie's Old Vic production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. His collection of the war memorabilia was so vast that it took over 2 floors of his house. He wrote books and television programmes on the subject. A projected film on Robert Baden-Powell was blocked by a union ban on filming in South Africa.

In 1982, Griffith wrote and directed The Most Valuable Englishman Ever, exploring the life of Thomas Paine.

Griffith was very much a political animal with firmly held views on British imperialism. These were reflected in some no-holds-barred documentaries about Winston Churchill, Cecil Rhodes and Napoléon Bonaparte.

Father of Eva Griffith.

In later years he supported the Conservative Party.

Heard but never seen, Kennith Griffith's loud, maniacal portrayal of Hitler, for the first time in British cinema in "The Two-Headed Spy," set the standard for all subsequent portrayals.

Kenneth Griffith was a Welsh actor and documentary filmmaker.

He attended the local Wesleyan Methodist chapel three times every Sunday, and became a lively rugby union scrum-half.

His outspoken views made him a controversial figure, especially when presenting documentaries which have been called "among the most brilliant, and controversial, ever made in Britain".

His coffin was decorated with the flags of Wales, Israel and the Irish tricolour.

He became a regular jobbing repertory actor, making his West End theatre debut in 1938 with a small part in Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday.

BBC Wales screened a film on Griffith's life in the "Welsh Greats" Series Two, shown in 2008.

Tenby Museum and Art Gallery in Pembrokeshire houses an archive of Griffith's papers and documentaries, and a cabinet containing a collection of personal memorabilia.

He caught scarlet fever while on his training in Canada and was invalided out of the service in 1942, which resulted in his taking up stamp collecting. The first stamp he collected was the Siege of Ladysmith, South Africa.

In 1973, Griffith made a documentary film about the life and death of Irish military and political leader Michael Collins titled Hang Up Your Brightest Colours (a line taken from a letter from George Bernard Shaw to one of Collins' sisters after Collins' assassination) for ATV, but the Independent Broadcasting Authority did not permit it to be screened (it was not shown until the BBC broadcast it in 1993). He named his home (110 Englefield Road, Islington, London) as Michael Collins' House.

In 1965, Huw Wheldon and the director of BBC2, David Attenborough, asked Griffith if he would like to make a film for the BBC on any subject that he chose. This resulted in a series of BBC films on subjects as diverse as the Boer War in "Soldiers of the Widow" (1967), Cecil Rhodes in "A Touch of Churchill", a "Touch of Hitler "(1971), the controversial story of Thomas Paine in "The Most Valuable Englishman Ever", David Ben-Gurion (The Light), Napoleon Bonaparte (The Man on the Rock), Pandit Nehru, Roger Casement (Heart of Darkness, 1992) and on one occasion a film commissioned by Thames Television on the story of the Three Wise Men of the New Testament, "A Famous Journey" (1979). Griffith was expelled from Iran by the country's Foreign Minister while making the documentary.

In 1994, Griffith was given a Cymru lifetime achievement award by BAFTA.

His parents separated and left the town Tenby six months after his birth, leaving him with his paternal grandparents, Emily and Ernest, who adopted him. His grandparents were staunch Wesleyan Methodists who taught him to question everything.

In 1937, he made his first professional acting appearance when he was cast by Peter Hoare as Cinna the Poet in a modern-dress version of Julius Caesar at the Cambridge Festival Theatre.

He passed the 11-plus and attended Greenhill Grammar School in Tenby, where he met English literature teacher Evelyn Ward, who recognised his writing and acting talent.

BBC Wales presented a retrospective season of five of his documentaries in 1993, including the suppressed Michael Collins work, opening the season with a biographical study of Griffith called The Tenby Poisoner in which Peter O'Toole, Martin McGuinness and Jeremy Isaacs paid tribute.

Griffith left school and moved to Cambridge in 1937, taking a job at an ironmonger's weighing nails. This lasted only a day, and proved to be the only job he ever had outside the acting world.

At one point in his career, Griffith accused the anti-censorship group Index of censoring him by delaying the publication of two book reviews he had written for its magazine. The political troubles left him "a frustrated and bemused figure". Screenonline described Griffith as "a world class documentary film-maker" who knew that "refusing to compromise his views has damaged his career".

Griffith was conscripted into the Royal Air Force during World War II. Before training in Canada, he returned to see his grandparents in Tenby, who, at his request, gave him an English translation of Hitler's book, Mein Kampf so he could better understand the origins of the war.

Griffith was interred beside his grandparents, Emily and Ernest in the churchyard adjoining St Nicholas and St Teilo Church in Penally.

His autobiography, 'The Fool's Pardon', was published in 1994 by Little, Brown.

In 1941, he made his debut in the first of more than 80 films, being "Love on the Dole".

He made a BBC2 documentary on runner Zola Budd, which purported to reveal injustices done to her by left-wing demonstrators and organisations during a tour of England in 1988.