"He was a Welsh coal miner's son whose celebrity was defined as much by his rakish personal life as his remarkable acting skills...One of Britain's greatest Shakespearean stage actors by the age of 27, he offered rugged good looks, a magnetic stage presence and an incomparable voice...[His voice]'with a tympanic resonance so rich and overpowering that it could give an air of verse to a recipe for stewed hare."