Carey Harrison(1944-2025)

The son of actor Rex Harrison and his second wife, Lilli Palmer, and the half brother of Noel Harrison, he spent the first years of his life in America, first in Hollywood, then in New York when Rex and Lilli were on Broadway, then on the French Lycee. He was educated at Sunningdale, Harrow and Cambridge. He was 12 or 13 when his parents divorced. His father married Kay Kendall and his mother married Carlos Thompson. He was further educated at boarding school and spent alternate holidays with his parents for about seven years. He shared with his father and Noel an interest in sport and often played football with The Entertainers (a Northern TV team) as a centre-forward. Carey was one of six young men out of 100's in Britain who was given a year's trainee directorship by ABC TV before it became Thames TV, but he decided that for him writing was more important. His first play was Dante Kaput and in mid '69, he was writing Shakespeare Farewell. He became a resident writer for Granada Television's experimental theatre, The Stables, which networked his play 'In a Cottage Hospital'. He lived in America with his wife and four children.