Alan Wheatley

Alan Wheatley (19 April 1907 – 30 August 1991) was an English actor. He was a well known stage actor in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, appeared in forty films between 1931 and 1965 and was a frequent broadcaster on radio from the 1930s to the 1990s, and on television from 1938 to 1964. His most prominent television role was the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Richard Greene as Robin Hood; Wheatley played the sheriff in 54 episodes between 1955 and 1959. Earlier, he had played Sherlock Holmes in the first television series featuring the great detective.

In addition to acting, Wheatley was a radio announcer during the Second World War, broadcasting to occupied Europe, where he became a well known voice. Poetry was another of his interests: he translated the poetry of Federico García Lorca and was a frequent reader of poems on air. In his later years he worked mainly in radio, as a narrator, a verse-reader and an actor.