Tom Fleming - voice of the Scots Gospels
21st April 2010
Tom Fleming began acting in 1945, co-founded the Edinburgh Gateway Company in 1953, and from 1962-4 was a leading member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He founded and directed the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company (1965-6) and became director of the Scottish Theatre Company (1982-7) with whom he received the Roman Szydlowski Prize for his production of 'The Thrie Estaites' in Warsaw (1986). His films include King Lear and Meetings with Remarkable Men. TV portrayals include Robert Burns, William Wallace, Jesus of Nazareth (the first time on TV) Henry IV, Weir of Hermiston and Lord Reith.
He was the ‘voice’ of the BBC at numerous royal and state occasions. He gave recitals of Scottish poetry to international festival audiences and read lines from Iain Crichton Smith’s poetry at the opening of the Scottish Parliament. Fleming held three honorary doctorates, was awarded the OBE in 1980 and CVO in 1998 and received the Saltire Society’s Andrew Fletcher Award for Services to Scotland in 2000.
Fleming had a long standing interest in Scots and gave the first public reading of the W L Lorimer translation of Luke’s Gospel a year before it was published. He went on to record the four gospels for the Lorimer Trust and his readings can be heard at the Scots Language Centre. Allen Wright described Fleming’s ‘mastery of the Scots tongue’ as ‘unrivalled’. Talking about the recordings, former Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Catherine Lockerbie said, ‘a great actor reads a great work’.