Hugo Williams

Hugo Williams FRSL (born Hugh Anthony Mordaunt Vyner Williams on 20 February 1942) is an English poet, journalist and travel writer. He received the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1999 and Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2004. Family and early life Williams was born in 1942 in Windsor. He was the eldest child of the actor and playwright Hugh Williams and his second wife, the model, actress and playwright Margaret Vyner. His brother is the actor Simon Williams. His sister Polly, an actress, died of cancer in 2004 at the age of 54. Hugh Williams had been a successful actor in the 1930s but his career declined after his service in the Second World War, in which he had been wounded. He declared bankruptcy in the early 1950s but the family's fortunes revived when he and his wife began collaborating as playwrights. They found success with the comedy The Grass is Greener which was first staged in London's West End in 1956.