Queer Places:
British Protestant Cemetery
Cairo, El Qahira, Egypt
Harold Lang (1923 – 16 November 1970) was a RADA-trained British character actor of stage and screen.[1] During the 1950s, in particular, played many sly or menacing roles in B-films. At one time managed his own theatrical company.[2] From 1960, Lang, a devotee of Stanislavski, also taught acting at Central School of Speech and Drama; and director
John Schlesinger filmed his work in a documentary, The Class, for BBC TV's Monitor, in 1961.[3][4]
Harold was a powerful, uneven actor and an absorbing director whose productions remained ( like the rest of his work) unfinished. He was a wonderful teacher, as may be seen in John Schlesinger's film The Lesson. He was energetically homosexual, and probably more stolen from than any traveler of equal experience. He was the funniest talker it is possible to imagine, whether embroidering some misfortune or inventing new adventures for Naomi ("Mick") Jacob, a lesbian novelist much admired in her day. He was an insatiable reader and sightseer. He also had what is called "a genius for friendship," which meant that he spent much of his time and energy seeing his friends, forcing them to confront his dizzying standards, caring for them when they were sick or in trouble or simply depressed. He was rigidly honest, except about his age and height, a truly dreadful cook, in all ways irreplaceable.
Harold Lang died in November 1970. He was returning from Australia, where he had directed a two-handed play; breaking the journey in his favorite city, Cairo, he learned that one of the actors had died of a heart attack. "Don't you go and die on me," he wrote home, and then suffered the first of the heart attacks that killed him. He was buried in the Cairo English cemetery.
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