* November 16 – Michael Billington, British drama critic

Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian that " play gets richer with each viewing ... there is poetry and passion behind the mathematics and metaphysics.

" If this is not great acting I don't know what is ", wrote Michael Billington in The Guardian.

" Michael Billington wrote, " Too much of this film has the hectoring stridency of tabloid headlines ", while Chris Petit in Time Out described it as " slick, ' adult ', self-congratulatory, and almost entirely hollow ", adding that " most of the interest comes in watching such a lavishly mounted vehicle leaving the rails so spectacularly.

He and his wife, who died in October 2002 at the age of 96, had eight children, among them the writers Lady Antonia Fraser, Lady Rachel Billington, Lady Judith Kazantzis, diplomat Sir Michael Pakenham and Thomas Pakenham ( the 8th Earl of Longford ).

Merchant took her stage name as a composite of the actress Vivien Leigh and her brother, who was a merchant seaman ( cited by Michael Billington ).

At first, Merchant took it very well, saying positive things about Fraser, according to her friend artist Guy Vaesen ( as cited by Michael Billington ); but, Vaesen recalled, after " a female friend of Vivien's trotted round to her house and poisoned her mind against Antonia ... ife in Hanover Terrace the Pinters then lived gradually became impossible ".

Critic Michael Billington recalled: " In Redgrave's Vanya you saw both a tremulous victim of a lifetime's emotional repression and the wasted potential of a Chekhovian might-have-been: as Redgrave and Olivier took their joint curtain call, linked hands held triumphantly aloft, we were not to know that this was to symbolise the end of their artistic amity.

Writing for The Observer, Robert Cushman thought that Le Mesurier played the role with " deeply grizzled torpor ", while Michael Billington, reviewing for The Guardian saw him as a " grey, gentle wisp of a man, full of half-completed gestures and seraphic smiles ".

The critic Michael Billington, summarising these events, wrote: " In 1960 the twenty-nine-year-old Peter Hall formally took charge at Stratford-upon-Avon and set about turning a star-laden, six-month Shakespeare festival into a monumental, year-round operation built around a permanent company, a London base and contemporary work from home and abroad.

Summing up this triumphant period, The Guardian critic Michael Billington later wrote: " 1977 the RSC struck gold.

The critic Michael Billington believes that this version is more suggestive of Fletcher than Shakespeare.

Critic Michael Billington believes this version is more suggestive of Middleton than Shakespeare.

* Billington, Michael.

People involved in the arts and born in the town include the actress Kathleen Harrison in 1892 ; Alfred Wainwright, author of the Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, in 1907 ; broadcaster Russell Harty in 1934 ; the internationally renowned Contemporary artist Ross Eccles in 1937, many of his paintings feature Blackburn and Lancashire scenes and landmarks ; the writer Josephine Cox in 1941 who set many of her novels in Lancashire ; the actor Anthony Valentine in 1939 ; the actor Michael Billington, star of UFO in 1941 ; actor Ian McShane in 1942 ; rock musician Tony Ashton in 1946 ; actor Jon Walmsley in 1956 ; film maker Michael Winterbottom in 1961 ; actor Steve Pemberton in 1967 ; actress Wendi Peters in 1968 ; actor / comedian Lee Mack in 1968 ; television host Debbie Travis ; author Tony O ' Neill in 1978 ; television presenter and documentary director Michael Gibson in 1980 ; and singer and actress Diana Vickers in 1991.

Stephen presented London stars such as Edmund Kean, Alexander and Elizabeth Pope ( née Elizabeth Younge ), Mrs. Dorothea Jordan, his brother John Philip Kemble, Wright Bowden, his sister Sarah Siddons, Elizabeth Billington, Michael Kelly ( tenor ), Anna Maria Crouch, and Charles Lee Lewes.

On 26 April 2005, Harold Pinter, who was to win the Nobel Prize in Literature later that year, gave a public reading and was interviewed by his official authorised biographer, Michael Billington, in the studio named for Pinter and located as part of the Faculty of Arts ( School of English and Drama ) in the Mile End campus, to celebrate its refurbishment.

Billington, Michael.

The critic Michael Billington writes of the piece, " It is not a closet gay play but a classic about the mysterious charm of androgeny.

Region 1 DVD release cover, displaying ( left to right ) actors Gabrielle Drake, Michael Billington and Ed Bishop

Colonel Paul Foster ( portrayed by Michael Billington ) is a former test pilot whose plane was critically damaged when SHADO's Sky One intercepted and destroyed a UFO in close proximity to Foster's jet.

During this appearance, Linehan took issue with Today programme presenter Justin Webb over what he saw as the attempted staging of an artificial argument between himself and the critic Michael Billington.

* 1955 – Michael Rooker, American actor

* 1982 – Michael Guy Chislett, Australian-American guitarist ( The Academy Is ... and Hillsong United )

* 1945 – Michael J. Smith, American astronaut ( d. 1986 )

* 1963 – Michael Waltrip, American race car driver

* 1975 – Michael Chaturantabut, Thai-American actor

* 1974 – Michael Mason, New Zealand cricketer

* 1648 – Johann Michael Bach, German composer ( d. 1694 )

* 1959 – Michael Kors, American fashion designer

* 1979 – Michael Kingma, Australian basketball player

* 1986 – Michael Lerchl, German footballer

* 1553 – Michael Servetus is arrested by John Calvin in Geneva.

* 1943 – Michael Willetts, English soldier, George Cross recipient ( d. 1971 )

* 1959 – Michael Bradley, Irish bass player and radio host ( The Undertones )

* 1972 – Michael Sinterniklaas, French-American actor, screenwriter, and director

* 1977 – Michael Klim, Australian swimmer

Chris Tremlett bowls Michael Beer ( cricketer ) | Michael Beer to complete England's 3 – 1 Ashes victory on 7 January 2011

* 1971 – Michael Hughes, Irish footballer

* 1976 – Michael Weiss, American figure skater

* 1992 – Michael Havers, British barrister and politician ( b. 1923 )

* 1958 – Michael Penn, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and composer ( Doll Congress )

* 1934 – Michael Chapman, English bassoonist ( d. 2005 )

* 1973 – Michael Ealy, American actor

* 1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world's first human open fetal surgery.

* 1944 – Michael Johnson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist