British actress renowned as one of the great character players of the
British theatre and cinema. At the age of 32, Robson played the old
Empress Elizabeth in Alexander Korda's
Catherine the Great (1934); she played Queen Elizabeth I in The Sea
Hawk (1940); but most famously she played the same role in Fire
Over England (1937), uttering the lines which have become part of
Elizabethan mythology: 'I know I have the body of a weak and feeble
woman, but I have the heart and valour of a King. Aye, and of a King
of England too.'
After the war, demonstrating her range, she appeared in Holiday
Camp (1947), the first of a series of films which featured the
very ordinary Huggett family; as the Mother Superior in Michael
Powell and Emeric Pressburger's
Black Narcissus
(1947); as a magistrate in Goodtime Girl (1948); as a prospective
Labour MP in Basil Dearden's excellent
Frieda (1947);
and in Dearden's costume melodrama, Saraband
for Dead Lovers (1948).
