Arthur English
British actor and comedian (1919–1995)
Arthur Leslie Norman English (9 May 1919 – 16 April 1995) was an English television, film and stage actor and comedian from the music hall tradition.
Early life
English was born at 22 Lysons Road in Aldershot, Hampshire, the son of Walter Frederick English (1856–1948) and Ethel English (née Parsons) (1886–1975), who married at Holy Trinity church in Aldershot in 1909. Arthur English had two older brothers: Walter (born 1910) and John Edgar (born 1912). All three boys were born in their parents' bedroom in Lysons Road and all three were baptised at Holy Trinity church. He attended West End Boys School in Aldershot (now the West End Centre) from the age of 5 to 14. His first stage appearance was aged 10 when he joined a group from Gale & Polden called the 'Five O'clock Follies' as an acrobat. On leaving school in 1933 he briefly worked at Fisher's Hotel in nearby Farnham before becoming an errand boy in a local grocery shop.
After serving in the British Army in the Second World War with the Hampshire Regiment and the Royal Armoured Corps, reaching the rank of sergeant, English worked as a painter and decorator in his native town, and in the evenings worked as a semi-professional entertainer in various local venues polishing up his comedy routines. He married Ivy Ruth Martin in 1941; it was she who made his enormous kipper ties out of brightly coloured curtain material at the beginning of his stage career. They had two children, Ann Faith (1942–1999) and Anthony (born 1947).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Arthur English” as british actor and comedian (1919–1995). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british actor and comedian (1919–1995). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2269667. VIAF identifies the subject as 55780775. The Library of Congress control number is n90711539. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1995, 1856 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arthur English” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.