Obituary :     Terence Denville-Faulkner,


 
 Dear All:

I am sad to have to report the death on Monday 26th October of Terence Denville-Faulkner,  (born Terence Faulkner) who, since 1970 when he joined the National Front, had been a devoted supporter of the British nationalist cause.

Arrangements for his funeral this Friday are given below below.

I think Terry was 84, but I am not sure because, like so many members of the acting profession, he was a bit shy about his age.

He was a surprising recruit to the National Front* [see footnote] for two reasons:

Firstly, because he was an actor, the only son of actor parents who in turn were connected to a celebrated family of actors — the Denvilles — who ‘trod the boards’ throughout the 20th century.

Secondly, because the most well-known member of the Denville clan, Sir Alfred Denville, in addition to being a very successful actor-manager, was a Conservative Member of Parliament for Newcastle-upon-Tyne Central for 14 years until he was swept away by the Labour landslide on 5th July 1945.

As we know, no areas of British life are more dominated by the most powerful and relentless enemy of British nationalism — Jewry — than show business/‘the media’ and politics. Thus for any actor seeking career on stage, screen and radio to identify with a nationalist party which denounced fearlessly the malignant impact Jewry has on every aspect of our national life, might be seen professional suicide.

But Terry did identify with the nationalist cause in the most public way possible: by standing for the National Front in parliamentary and local government elections, even though he was aware of the career risks that entailed.

In fairness to other actors — and, indeed, members of all professions whose advancement depends on ‘keeping in’ with the Establishment — Terry was assisted in not needing to hide his political beliefs as a result of a bequest from Sir Alfred Denville which provided him with an income for life providing he added ‘Denville’ to his surname. Hence, by resort to Deed Poll, he became Terence Denville-Faulkner, or simply ‘Terry Denville’ in show business.

The main part of Sir Alfred’s estate was left to members of the theatrical profession in the form of his country House, Denville Hall at Northwood., Middlesex. This bequest was developed by a trust to become the well-known Denville Hall retirement and care home for actors. Nowadays one has to be a multi-millionaire like Richard Attenborough (“Lord Attenborough, of Richmond-upon-Thames”) to retire to Denville Hall, where the ‘full medical attention’ charge is £2,000 a week. Terry’s means were not of that order, so the last of the actor Denvilles did not end his days at Denville Hall.

Sir Alfred, unlike Terry, was an Establishment-approved Tory, not a nationalist, and so he was able to entertain members of the Royal Family at Denville Hall. I attach a pre-WW2 photo of Sir Alfred escorting Queen Mary, widow of King George V, on a tour of the gardens at his home.

Terry the Actor

Terry’s mother and father were actor-managers who, for decades following WW2 until they retired, ran the repertory company at St Helier, Jersey, in the Channel Isles. This is where Terry learned his profession. Every week the company had to produce a new play. While they performed their parts in the current week’s production they were also learning their lines and stage directions for next week’s play. Terry was a noted ‘quick study’, but what a demanding grind that week-after-week routine must have been.

That routine was broken by National Service in the Army, which in Terry’s day was compulsory. Terry served his two years as a private soldier in the Intelligence Corps, firstly at a training camp near Mayfield in East Sussex, and then later in Germany. Not long after his discharge he moved on from his parents’ repertory company in Jersey to embark on a career as an independent jobbing actor.

I do not have a vast amount of information about Terry’s theatrical career, but it included appearing in repertory company productions in all parts of the United Kingdom. It also involved, as with so many actors, periods of ‘resting’. These periods were often broken in the summer by him being called on to understudy the leading protagonist in Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, still the West End’s longest-running play. Unfortunately for Terry, the sequence of lead actors for whom he understudied were never indisposed.

I saw him in two productions: at a Gawsworth Hall season at Macclesfield, in the late 1980s. If memory serves, this was an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca in which Terry had the part of a magistrate; and, also in the late 80s, at the Civic Theatre in St Albans, where he played the part of Abanazer in Aladdin — a pantomime rôle which provides great scope for over-acting, which he exploited with gusto.

He was also involved for several sequences in the BBC TV Dr Who series — as the leading ‘Cyber Man’. Until quite recently he was called on to give personal appearances at Dr Who conventions. This generated a big fan club and he regularly received fan mail about his rôle and his recollections about particular episodes.

At this point I should record that when at the BBC for Dr Who and other productions, Terry did not, as has been claimed, wander about the BBC TV Centre, then at Shepherd’s Bush, west London, hawking National Front publications. He didn’t have a death wish!

What he used to do was leave copies of NF material about in the TV Centre’s huge club and canteen, and then sit back and watch who would pick up these items and how they reacted. What fun! Some recipients did indeed explode in wrath, but others looked around slyly, then tucked the item in their pocket or handbag.

Terry certainly had acting talent. This was recognised in the ‘trade’ magazine The Stage in its 12th September 2002 review (see attachment) of his performance in the touring production of The Miser (the Henry Fielding version of the Molière classic). Part of the review read:

“....With a lifetime of comic performances to draw on,
veteran actor Terence Denville clearly relishes the part
of the title character, playing Lovegold with great panache....”

Terry’s last TV appearance was about five years ago in an episode of the hit comedy show Miranda. He played the part of an aged dementia sufferer. All he had to do was feign sleep and then, when awoken, stare in a close-up to camera and emit a banshee yell. How ironic and cruel life — and art — can be, in view of his decline into dementia only a couple of years later.

Terry the Nationalist Activist

I first became aware of Terry a year or so after he joined he NF. We mobilised to counter a demonstration by a Red group which had threatened to attack the home of a 90 year old NF supporter, a Mr Scott, because he pinned up an NF poster on the front wall of his terraced cottage in South Croydon.

Terry turned up with another actor friend, both dressed in black leather jackets, jeans and boots, which they assumed was de rigueur for NF street fighters. The Reds put in an appearance, but were quickly seen off without the need for Terry and his pal to ‘put the boot in’ (much to their relief, I’m sure).

Willingness to stand as a candidate in parliamentary by-elections was one Terry’s specialities. He did it several times. The first time was in 1976 at Carshalton, an outer suburb in south-west London. The NF had wasted a year in (necessary) High Court litigation to get rid of the financial and political spiv John Kingsley Read and his ‘Populist’ faction. The party was anxious resume proper political work. Terry volunteered to be the candidate and was adopted by the local branch.

Terry was an unselfish campaigner. A week before polling day in the Carshalton by-election he took a day off to go to Coventry, Warwickshire, and speak at the public election meeting in support of Andrew Fountaine, the NF’s Deputy-Chairman and its candidate in the by-election for Coventry North-West.  On 4th March Fountaine won 986 votes (2.75%). The nationalist vote was split by John Kingsley Read who took 208 votes (0.60%)

At Carshalton Terry obtained 1,851 votes (4.61%) — far higher than we expected — and he would have polled an even better vote without the intervention of an independent ‘Conservative Anti-Common Market’ candidate Reg Simmerson.

This whetted Terry’s appetite for further electoral forays in other parts of he country, which I do not need to list here, even if I could call them all to mind.

Amidst all this election campaigning he kept up with the routine work of his local Kingston & Richmond NF branch. He was a member of its committee and, unless a work engagement prevented, he attended all its meetings as well as the monthly general members meeting. He frequently joined branch activists with weekly leafleting.

A personal aspect of his campaign for Carshalton in the 3rd May 1979 general election is well worth mentioning:

He was thrilled that his aged parents left their Jersey home for three weeks, moved to a B&B in the area, and spent day after day knocking on doors to canvassing support for him. They did this not because they fully understood NF policy, but out of pride in and love for their son and because, like their son, they were British patriots.

Minority parties’ votes almost always drop in general elections compared to their by-election performances, and this was seen at Carshalton in 1979 where Terry obtained 919 votes (1.78%), half his vote in the 1976 by-election.

Even so, the campaign had its consolations. Veteran nationalist activist Paul Ballard, a Carshalton resident, tells me that he accompanied Terry to the Town Hall where the votes were counted. When Terry mounted the stage prior to the announcement of the result, he was greeted to a burst of applause from council workers on and around the stage who had supervised the proceedings.

That spontaneous demonstration from municipal employees says it all about Terry. People warmed to him because he was a decent man, a gentleman. Those who knew him will miss him terribly. We can all hope that the after-life promises of his Roman Catholic faith come true for him.

[*Footnote:
Here I refer to the authentic National Front formed in 1967 and which ceased exist in 1986/87, not to the group — or sequence of groups — which later adopted its name, but not either its formal Statement of Policy or its Constitution.]

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Terry’s funeral.....

.....will take place at 3.00pm
this Friday, 6th November,
At Kingston Crematorium
Bonner Hill Road
Kingston-upon-Thames
Surrey
KT1 3EZ.


Flowers (by 12 noon Friday) to:
“Terence Denville-Faulkner funeral”
c/o Barnes & Hicks Funeral Directors
123 Askew Road
Shepherds Bush
London
W12 9AU.

or if preferred, a donation to:
“Marie Curie” (cancer charity)
    via cheque:
89 Albert Embankment
London
SE1 7TP.
    via phone:
0800 716146
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NWN: Those who have been involved in nationalism since the 1970's will know of Terry . Especially the National Front. Not the latest version or group now using that name. We have much more info on Terry, including the fact that he was an actor that appeared in DOCTOR WHO episodes.