Kenneth Williams: Faith, Fun and Fiction - A discussion

To celebrate 100 years since the birth of Kenneth Williams, Bill Holland, author of Beyond Our Kenneth: The Continued Diaries discusses Williams' beliefs, friendships, anecdotes and a fictional future with Gyles Brandreth and the Dean of Southwark.

Kenneth Williams was one of the most distinctive voices in British entertainment, remembered for his scene-stealing turns in the Carry On films, his razor-sharp wit on radio's Just a Minute, and his memorable chat show appearances. His real diaries, published posthumously, captivated generations with their candour, humour and poignancy, ending abruptly with his final entry in 1988.

Beyond Our Kenneth: The Continued Diaries of Kenneth Williams imagines what might have happened had this king of comedy survived and continued writing into the early 1990s, placing his unmistakable voice into a new decade of cultural change. Author Bill Holland - inspired by his long-standing admiration for Williams' life and work - extends his perspective with authenticity and affection. The result is both a playful continuation and a celebration of one of Britain's most fascinating cultural figures.

Bill Holland graduated from the Arts Educational Schools, and spent ten years working as an actor before putting pen to paper.
His wide-ranging interests include the Olympic Games, British sitcoms, the Whitechapel murders, English royalty, numismatics and the Eurovision Song Contest.

Research for his first book, Beyond Our Kenneth – a fictional continuation of the diaries of Kenneth Williams – brought him into contact with many of the late Carry On star's remaining friends and colleagues, as well as with other authors and aficionados of the topic.

Bill lives in Fulham, south-west London.

Gyles Brandreth is a journalist, broadcaster, Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Chester, and probably best known as a regular on This Morning and on Radio 4’s Just A Minute. He has appeared on QI, Have I Got News For You, Room 101, Countdown, The Chase, Pointless, Mastermind, This Is Your Life and Desert Island Discs. He is the founder of the Teddy Bear Museum now housed at Newby Hall in Yorkshire, a former European Monopoly Champion and founder of the National Scrabble Championships. In the 1990s he was MP for the City of Chester and a government whip and Lord Commissioner of the Treasury. As a journalist he writes for the Telegraph and Daily Mail and is a columnist for The Oldie. He has written many books, from murder mysteries to biographies, appeared on stage in everything from Shakespeare to pantomime, and has featured in the Guinness Book of Records for making the longest-ever after-dinner speech, lasting twelve and a half hours.

The Very Rev’d Dr Mark Oakley is Dean of Southwark. Formerly Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, and Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, he is an author of several books on poetry and theology. He was awarded the international Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing for his book The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry, and the Lanfranc Award by the Archbishop of Canterbury for education and scholarship. He has worked at the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden as Rector and has a strong interest in theatre. He is also Patron of Tell MAMA, monitoring Islamophobic hate crime, and Ambassador for Stop Hate UK. In 2025 he was appointed Whitelands Professorial Fellow in Christian Theology and Contemporary Issues by Roehampton University.

This talk is in-person only and won't be streamed or recorded. Doors to the Cathedral Library will open at 6.15pm.