This irresistible cocktail of ingredients taken mainly from Shakespeare’s two Henry IV plays and Henry V brings into sharp focus the complex and ill-fated relationship between the young Prince Hal (Baxter) and his mentor in roistering, Sir John Falstaff. Welles’s vision was realised first in a stage play, which flopped in Dublin in 1960 and failed to transfer to London; but five years later he had translated it triumphantly into a film which he intended as ‘a lament . . . for the death of Merrie England’. Baxter played Hal in both productions. In an engaging volume of memoirs, ‘My Sentiments Exactly’, he wrote vividly about working with a titan of the cinema and of ‘the sheer bravura of his genius’ – as evident in ‘Chimes at Midnight’ as it was in ‘Citizen Kane’. The role changed Baxter’s life.

John Coldstream will present a short intro on Keith Baxter, his work and his ties to Chichester.