David Warner channelled the despair of his childhood into arguably the greatest performance of Hamlet in the 1960s. After his parents separated in his early childhood, they kept “stealing” him from each other and he consequently attended 11 schools where he made no friends. Eventually he started going to the cinema as the only escape from the psychodramas at home.
While rehearsing Hamlet, Warner, then 23, found out that his mother, whom he had not seen for years, was seriously ill. She was buried on the day the first, excellent, reviews were published.
Tall, gangling, painfully shy and subject to panic attacks, Warner betrayed his existential pain with sardonic wryness and darting blue eyes. As Hamlet he spluttered each syllable of the play’s most