David Markham

David Markham (3 April 1913 – 15 December 1983) was an English stage and film actor for over forty years.¹²

Markham was born Peter Basil Harrison in Wick, Worcestershire and died in Hartfield, East Sussex.

In 1937 he married Olive Dehn (1914–2007), a BBC Radio dramatist.³ They had four daughters: Sonia, an illustrator; Kika (b. 1940), an actress, widow of actor Corin Redgrave; Petra (b. 1944), an actress; and Jehane, a poet and dramatist, widow of actor Roger Lloyd-Pack.⁴

In World War II, he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector, before being allowed to do forestry work.⁵

Markham appeared occasionally in cinema and often on television.⁶ He appeared in Carol Reed's film The Stars Look Down (1939) and in François Truffaut's films Two English Girls (1972), in which he plays a fortuneteller with his daughter Kika, and Day for Night (1973).⁷

His first television appearance may have been with Peter Wyngarde in a BBC television play called "The Rope", broadcast on 12 January 1950.⁸ He played the father of Robin Phillips in two films, Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969) and Tales From The Crypt (1972).²

Markham portrayed Prime Minister H. H. Asquith (a close look-alike) in the 1981 BBC Wales drama The Life and Times of David Lloyd George, alongside his daughter Kika Markham, who played Lloyd George's secretary, lover and later second wife – Frances Stevenson.