Denys Hawthorne

Denys Hawthorne was an actor who appeared in a number of roles in British television and Film.

An Ulsterman by birth, Hawthorne was born into a well-to-do Protestant family. Hawthorne's father was in the linen business in Portadown, County Armagh.  Hawthorne  read law at Queen's University, Belfast, and then settled on a career in the theatre.

He joined the Ulster Group Theatre (UGT), before traveling to London and joining the BBC radio drama repertory. He was a regular player at George Devine's Royal Court in Sloane Square, in London, where he distinguished himself in the theatre of the absurd of Eugène Ionesco, playing the Old Man in The Chairs (1957).

Between 1974 and 1978 he appeared in 46 episodes of the women's prison soap Within These Walls, as prison physician Dr Peter Mayesm  as well as in the banking series Capital City (1989-90) and the BBC drama Dangerfield (1995).

He was awarded the Society of Authors' prize for his dramatisation of Jennifer Johnston's novel How Many Miles to Babylon, and he was a joint recipient in 2002 of an SWPA (Spoken Word Publishers Association) award for his contribution to the recording of Yeats's poetry for Naxos audiobooks.