Clive Merrison

Clive Merrison is a Welsh actor born on 15 September 1945 in Tenby, Wales, whose career has encompassed film, television, stage, and radio. He trained at Rose Bruford College before going on to build a wide-ranging body of work across several decades.

Merrison is perhaps most widely recognized for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in BBC Radio 4 dramatisations. Beginning on 5 November 1989 and concluding on 5 July 1998, he played Holmes across all 64 episodes of the series, with Michael Williams as Dr. Watson. He subsequently continued in the role opposite Andrew Sachs as Watson in The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a pastiche series scripted by Bert Coules, whose four series aired in 2002, 2004, 2008–9, and 2010, comprising 16 episodes in total. Merrison holds the distinction of being the first actor to have portrayed Holmes in adaptations of every short story and novel Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about the character.

His stage career included membership in Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company during the 1970s and work with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. He portrayed Antonin Artaud in the Rome and London premieres of Charles Marowitz's play Artaud at Rodez. Merrison played the headmaster in Alan Bennett's The History Boys in both the original National Theatre production and the 2006 Broadway production, the latter of which won six Tony Awards and an Olivier Award for Best New Play. He reprised the role in the 2006 film adaptation and in the 2006 BBC Radio 4 adaptation of the same work.

On television, Merrison appeared twice in Doctor Who, in The Tomb of the Cybermen in 1967 and Paradise Towers in 1987. He played Boris Savinkov in the 1983 series Reilly: Ace of Spies alongside Sam Neill, and took on the role of barrister Charles Banham across 15 episodes of Crown Court between 1976 and 1978. He played Bob Cratchit in a 1977 BBC adaptation of A Christmas Carol opposite Michael Hordern as Ebenezer Scrooge, and later portrayed Clement Attlee in the 2012 television film Bert and Dickie. His other television credits include Yes, Prime Minister, Drop the Dead Donkey, Pie in the Sky, Midsomer Murders, Foyle's War, Lewis, Bergerac, The Bill, and Peep Show, in which he played Mark Corrigan's father in the 2010 Christmas special.

Merrison's film work spans more than four decades. He appeared as the forger in the 1981 film Escape to Victory and as Bartholomew Sholto in The Sign of Four in 1983. He played the onscreen father of Kate Winslet's character in Peter Jackson's 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, and took the role of Desmond Fairchild in An Awfully Big Adventure in 1995. Further film credits include Firefox (1982), The English Patient (1996), True Blue (1996), Photographing Fairies (1997), Saving Grace (2000), Pandaemonium (2000), Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972), Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), Janice Beard (1999), The Lady in the Van (2015), and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018).

In radio work beyond the Holmes series, Merrison played Giuseppe Verdi in Sunday at Sant' Agata, Professor Gordon Zellaby in a 2003 adaptation of John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos, and the Marquis St. Evremonde in a 2011 adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. Merrison married Stephanie Tremethick in 1967 and later married actress Gillian Barge in 2003; Barge died the same year.