James Roose-Evans

Roose-Evans attended the Crypt Grammar School, Gloucester, before spending eighteen months in the Royal Army Educational Corps, ending his service in Trieste in 1947.

Among the RADA students Roose-Evans taught were Mike Leigh, Sarah Miles, John Hurt, Geoffrey Whitehead, and Michael Williams.

He also taught at the Central School of Speech and Drama, where he influenced students including Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench.

In 1959 Roose-Evans founded the Hampstead Theatre Club, at Moreland Hall, in Holly Bush Vale, London.

His assistant there, Susan Kruger, gave him a copy of Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road, which he then adapted for the stage.

In February 2015 his new production of 84 Charing Cross Road opened at Salisbury with Janie Dee as Helene and Clive Francis as Frank Doel.

The Bleddfa Centre hosts seminars, workshops and retreats, and aims to encourage the exploration of the relationship between art and life, and between the creative and the spiritual.

Roose-Evans was the author of twenty-one books, including: Directing A Play, with an introduction by Vanessa Redgrave; Experimental Theatre; London Theatre: from the Globe to the National; One Foot on the Stage (the biography of the actor Richard Wilson); Inner Journey: Outer Journey; Passages of the Soul: Ritual Today; Opening Doors and Windows: A Memoir in Four Acts; and Finding Silence: 52 Meditations for Daily Living.

Roose-Evans also edited the letters of Joyce Grenfell to her mother, Darling Ma, as well as her wartime journals, The Time of My Life.

Roose-Evans had two major relationships in his life: the first was with the actor David March whom he met as a student in Oxford and with whom he lived until 1960.

[2] Roose-Evans is the author of and a number of children's books, including The Odd and Elsewhere series was illustrated by Brian Robb.