Robert William Speaight CBE (/speɪt/; 1904 – 1976[1]) was a British actor and writer, and the brother of George Speaight, the puppeteer.
Speaight studied under Elsie Fogerty at the Central School of Speech and Drama, then based in the Royal Albert Hall, London.[2] He was an early performer (from 1927) in radio plays. He came to prominence as Becket in the first production of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. He went on to Shakespearean roles and to direct. He played the title role in the first broadcast in 1941-42 of the radio drama The Man Born to Be King.
He also wrote criticism and essays, works on the theatre and biography. He was a Roman Catholic convert, and biographer of Hilaire Belloc and Eric Gill. In the case of Gill, a personal friend, he suppressed material about Gill's sexual interests, which would come out only in the 1989 biography by Fiona MacCarthy.
He married the Welsh actress Evelyn Bowen, with whom he had a son; they separated in 1939. Evelyn later married the celebrated Irish writer Frank O'Connor, with whom she had three children.
