George Speaight

George Victor Speaight ( ; 6 September 1914 – 22 December 2005) was a British theatre historian, author, and performer.

Early years Speaight was born on 6 September 1914. One of his brothers was actor Robert Speaight, who paid for some of his education at Haileybury. Like his older brother, George was a gifted and natural performer from a young age. At age four, he acted as the Page in a family production of Romeo and Juliet, and in 1921 won an elocution prize for the Ghost's speech in Hamlet. In 1934, he was received into the Catholic Church and after leaving Bumpus' in 1938 he spent six months as a farm labourer at the sculptor Eric Gill's rural community, Piggotts, in Sussex, where he came upon the idea of writing his book about Punch and Judy while digging potatoes. Published as Punch and Judy: a History in 1970, the book was to be the first serious study on the subject.

Speaight's book Juvenile Drama: The History of the English Toy Theatre appeared in December 1946. In the same year he became manager of Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop. Its owner modernised the stock to appeal to a contemporary audience with, among other innovations, a toy theatre version of the 1948 Laurence Olivier film of Hamlet devised by Speaight. However, the shop was a financial failure and it closed in 1951.

Speaight retained an interest in the theatre, being a co-founder the London Munich Puppet Players; a founding member of the Society for Theatre Research, editing its journal Theatre Notebook from 1969 to 1976; and producing a catalogue of 19th century plays. He held prominent roles at the Union Internationale de la Marionnette, at the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild, and as a jury member at the International Festival of Puppet Theatre at Bucharest. He founded or co-founded several other theatrical enterprises, e.g. the "London Puppet Players" with and Stefan Fichert from Germany.

In 1968, Speaight became a trustee of Pollock's Toy Museum after its then owner Marguerite Fawdry turned her private museum into an educational charitable trust. He retired as a trustee in 2003 and in his honour Pollock's held the exhibition - 'George Speaight, a Life in Toy Theatre'.

In 1946, Speaight married Mary Olive Mudd, a wood engraver. They had two children together, including journalist Margaret Speaight. He died on 22 December 2005, aged 91.