Marie Seton (20 March 1910 – 17 February 1985)[1] was a British actress, art, theatre and film critic and biographer of Sergei Eisenstein, Paul Robeson, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Satyajit Ray.
[2] In 1936, she helped her friend C. L. R. James, the Trinidadian writer and radical political activist, to put on his play about the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History, which starred Paul Robeson in the title role, with the Stage Society.
She also had family associations with India through her father, who had served as an officer in the Indian Army and been seriously wounded during one of the many uprisings of the period".
Seton lived in India in the 1960s and 1970s, and was actively involved in the film society movement, at the same time as being a close observer of Indian politics.
On her death, at her own request she was cremated, and the plaque of her ashes in Golders Green Crematotarium reads: "Marie Seton Hesson, Padma Bhushan, Citizen of the World".