Michael Flanders

Michael Henry Flanders OBE, (1 March 1922 – 14 April 1975) was an English actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs. He is best known to the general public for his partnership with Donald Swann performing as the double act Flanders and Swann.

Life and career

Michael Flanders was born in London on 1 March 1922. The son of an actor and a professional violinist, Flanders' ambition from an early age was to work in the theatre. He attended Westminster School (where he first met Donald Swann) and went on to read History at Christ Church, Oxford in 1940.

While at Oxford, Flanders started work as a professional actor, but then left Oxford to join the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. HMS Marne, the ship on which he was serving was torpedoed off the coast of Africa, west of Gibraltar in November 1942. Flanders survived the attack. Later he was promoted to Sub-Lieutenant but contracted poliomyelitis at sea, and spent the rest of his life from 1943 onwards in a wheelchair.

Unable to return to Christ Church to continue his studies, he found work as a radio broadcaster. A chance meeting with Swann in 1948 led to the start of their professional partnership. They began writing songs for West-End producer Laurier Lister, Swann writing the music and Flanders writing the words. Their songs were performed by artists such as Ian Wallace and Joyce Grenfell. They subsequently wrote two two-man revues, At The Drop Of A Hat and At The Drop of Another Hat, which they performed all over the world until their partnership ended in 1967.

Their more famous songs included "The Hippopotamus" ("Mud, mud, glorious mud") and "First and Second Law", in which they put to music the laws of thermodynamics. One of their most enduring numbers is the ever-so-mildly risqué "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear". Their songs celebrated transportation ("The Slow Train", "The Last Tram", "A Transport of Delight," the last-named a tribute to the London double-decker omnibus), animal life ("The Wart-Hog", "The Gnu", "The Elephant", and many others), common inconveniences in "The Gas-Man Cometh", "Motor Perpetuo" (about parking a car), "Song of Reproduction" (about hi-fidelity phonographs), and even classical music, with an irreverent "Guide to Britten" and a setting of lyrics by Flanders to the finale of Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 ("Ill Wind"). Some of his songs were also political commentary, such as "20 Tons Of TNT" and "The War Of 14-18".

Outside of his partnership with Swann, Flanders was a versatile librettist, actor and broadcaster. He wrote the words for comic operas such as Three's Company and Christmas Story, and a children's cantata Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo. He appeared on stage in The Soldier's Tale and Ten Years Hard, and in two films, Doctor in Distress (1963) and The Raging Moon (1971). He also made many appearances on radio and television, and received an OBE in 1964.

His narration for Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf remained a staple of EMI's classical output for many years. Within the last few months of his life he also provided English-language narration and voicework for the French export children's animation Barbapapa.

Flanders died suddenly of a ruptured intracranial berry aneurysm on 14 April 1975 while on holiday at Betws-y-Coed, Wales. He was survived by his wife Claudia Cockburn (daughter of journalist Claud Cockburn and his first wife Hope Hale Davis), and their daughters Laura and Stephanie.

Flanders' ashes are scattered on the peaceful, timeless grounds of Chiswick House in west-central London, a place where he very often liked to sit in the afternoon during the final years of his life.

On 30 June 2007, a documentary about Flanders and his work, presented by his daughter Stephanie, aired on BBC Radio 4's The Archive Hour, called Flanders on Flanders.^[1]

References

• The Flanders and Swann online resource
• Biography of Flanders by the BBC

External links

• Michael Flanders at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Flanders at the Internet Broadway Database
• The Flanders and Swann forum
• BBC news website item re. Flanders