William Squire

William Arthur Squire (29 April 1917 – 3 May 1989) was a Welsh actor born in Neath, Glamorgan, to William Squire and his wife Martha, née Bridgeman. Over the course of his career he worked extensively across stage, film, and television, earning recognition in all three mediums before his death in London on 3 May 1989.

Squire's stage career encompassed work at Stratford-upon-Avon and the Old Vic, and his Broadway appearances spanned from 1946 to 1963. Among his Broadway credits were The Critic, Oedipus Rex, and King Henry IV, Part II. His most prominent Broadway role came when he stepped into the part of King Arthur in Camelot at the Majestic Theatre, succeeding his fellow Welshman Richard Burton in the role. Squire had previously appeared alongside Burton in the 1956 film Alexander the Great, in which Burton played the title role.

His television work included a recurring role in the British spy series Callan, where he portrayed the intelligence chief known by the code name Hunter. According to Television Heaven, this became his best-known role; Squire was the fourth actor to play Hunter in the main series and held the part longer than any of his predecessors, including Derek Bond. He also appeared as Sir Daniel Brackley in the 1972 television adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow and took part in the classic 1960s series An Age of Kings. On film, Squire played Thomas More in the 1969 adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's Anne of the Thousand Days. He additionally portrayed Macbeth in a series of educational films about Shakespeare's play produced by Encyclopædia Britannica.

Squire contributed notable voice work as well, providing the voice of Gandalf in the 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. The following year he appeared in the Doctor Who serial The Armageddon Factor, playing the character known as the Shadow. In a different medium, he narrated radio advertisements for Findus Foods broadcast on Radio Caroline in the late 1960s, doing so under the pseudonym Frobisher Collingwood — a name his son Nick later explained was a joke devised between Squire and his friend Hugh Bredin, who wrote the advertisements, combining two London telephone exchanges of the era.

On 15 June 1967, Squire participated in a recording by the St. John's College choir at the University of Cambridge titled A Meditation on Christ's Nativity. For the album he read several poems, including The Annunciation by John Donne and A Dialogue by George Herbert, as well as a passage from 1 John 1:1–10 drawn from the New English Bible.

Squire was first married to actress Betty Dixon and later wed actress Juliet Harmer in 1967. A park bench on Hampstead Heath stands as a memorial to him.