Retrospective: Michael Holden

This is one of three articles looking back at the lives and careers of the young co-stars of Granada Television’s iconic adaptation of The Owl Service which first aired in 1969-70. All three – Michael Holden, Gillian Hills and Francis Wallis – had disappeared from the acting profession by the time The Owl Service was repeated in colour in 1978. This is Michael’s story.

Michael Holden, born Michael Turner, was a Welsh actor who had a short television career in the years leading up to 1970. His earliest screen credit was in Barbarian Librarians, an episode of the popular ITV sitcom Please Sir! first shown on 6 December 1968. The storyline sees Fenn Street school teacher Bernard Hedges (John Alderton) entrust his unruly class 5C with a project to set up and run an after-school library. Inevitably, 5C’s time in the library is spent partying, smoking and drinking. The library is ransacked after Michael’s character Graham Webster, from rival class 5B, is summarily ejected. Webster confesses after Sharon (Penny Spencer) lures him into 5C’s clutches with her feminine wiles, and he helps repair the damage in the nick of time before an inspection by the school governors.

Scenes featuring Michael Holden’s character Graham Webster in the Please Sir! episode Barbarian Librarians, alongside fellow cast members including (top left) Penny Spencer as Sharon Eversleigh and (lower right) John Alderton as Bernard Hedges.

As Michael put it himself in the Derby Evening Telegraph (5 February 1970):

“I played a yob who got nearest to Sharon. I’m pretty good at playing yobs.”

At least, this was Michael’s only credited Please Sir! episode. In other episodes a youth bearing a striking resemblance to Michael can be spotted smirking at the rear of shot in 5C’s classroom, or in one case carving graffiti onto a desk. (These episodes, all from the first series, are Maureen Bullock Loves Sir, A Near Greek Tragedy, Student Princess and It’s the Thought that Counts.) This does create a continuity problem given his contemporaneous appearance as the antagonist from 5B.

Uncredited appearances by Michael Holden as a supporting actor in Please Sir! Left: in Maureen Bullock Loves Sir (with Malcolm McFee as Peter Craven in the foreground). Right: in It’s the Thought that Counts.

Thames Television’s You and the World was broadcast as part of ITV’s educational programming for schools. The series was aimed at 13-16 year olds – it was described in the rather uncompromising language of the time as “social drama for less able pupils”. Michael Holden appeared as Tony in one episode first shown on 5 May 1969. This set of programmes for the school summer term, titled The Kick-Off’s at Three, dramatised the experiences of a young offender in the criminal justice system. Many if not all of the episodes are feared lost.

Michael had another supporting role in Strange Report (Report 1021: Shrapnel – The wish in the dream) first shown on ITV in the London region on 24 October 1969. The plot sees Adam Strange (Anthony Quayle) investigate the peculiar circumstances of a deadly explosion at a chemicals plant. A messenger boy (Michael Holden) couriers a reel of tape to Strange with a distorted recording; and later delivers a mysteriously dry-cleaned suit to the wife of the man believed killed in the explosion. A piece of shrapnel in the dead man’s body holds the key to solving the case.

Scenes featuring Michael Holden as a messenger boy in Strange Report (Report 1021: Shrapnel – The wish in the dream) alongside (left) Anthony Quayle as Adam Strange.

Undoubtedly, though, being cast as Gwyn in Granada Television’s adaptation of Alan Garner’s The Owl Service was the biggest break in Michael’s career. This eight part series, broadcast originally on ITV between 21 December 1969 and 8 February 1970, was Granada’s first major all-film, all-location, fully-scripted drama serial. Garner himself wrote the script for the serialisation and participated in the filming on location.

Garner’s story, set in a remote Welsh valley, explores the tense relationship between three teenagers: Alison (Gillian Hills), her step brother Roger (Francis Wallis) and the housekeeper’s son Gwyn (Michael Holden). Hearing scratching sounds coming from the ceiling, Gwyn retrieves some plates from the attic which are edged with a curious pattern. Alison discovers she can trace the pattern to create paper owls. Inexorably, the power of an ancient legend is unleashed which begins to consume the three youngsters. They are fated to reenact a modern version of the tragic story: a lethal triangle involving Blodeuwedd, created from flowers as a wife for Lleu but punished and turned into an owl for betraying him in favour of Gronw.

Michael’s interpretation of Gwyn in The Owl Service belied his inexperience as an actor. In Episode Five he brings Alan Garner’s words to life:

Gwyn: “At Aber they want me to go on.”

Alison: “On what?”

“With school.”

“I can see you in about thirty years. You’ll be Professor of Welsh!”

“Not me. I’ve got to get out of this place. There’s nothing here but sheep.”

“But I thought it meant a lot to you.”

“It does. But you can’t eat a feeling.”

“What will you do?”

“At the moment, the likely chance is that I’ll be behind the counter at the Co-op in a couple of months.”

“No!”

“Oh yes.”

“But why?”

“My Mam thinks it’s a good idea.”

“But she must have worked to see you through school. I mean, why throw it away?”

“Oh my mam’s ambitious. But her horizon’s about three inches high. As long as I leave the house in a suit every morning, that’s mam happy. All the other lads in the street wear overalls.

... “I’ve been saving up, see, and I’ve bought this set of records. And if I go behind that counter I’ll buy myself a record player. I can tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone else. But I can tell you. These records, they teach you to speak properly. That’s what matters. That, and night school.”

“No!”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way you speak. Except when you’re putting it on on purpose to annoy people. It doesn’t matter.”

“But I’m a Taff aren’t I?”

“It doesn’t matter. I like it. It’s you and not ten thousand other people.”

“It doesn’t matter — as long as you haven’t got it.”

Michael is convincing as an ambitious working class schoolboy, chafing against meager expectations of a job behind the counter at the local Co-op – and against the snobbery of the family he is forced to serve. Alison disloyally tells Roger about the elocution records, who then mocks Gwyn mercilessly about them:

Roger: “How now brown cow… How’s the rain in Spain? Still mainly on the plain?”

Gwyn: “You told him? You told him? Told him?"

Alison: “No!”

Gwyn: “You told him? Was it a good laugh? I bet it was.”

Roger: “You’re not quite on the ball, actually. Ali didn’t say much. I mean, I don’t know whether you’re using the complete Improva-Prole set or the shorter course of Oiks’ Exercises for getting by in the shop.”

Gwyn’s romantic closeness to Alison, and then desolation at her betrayal, is the emotional core of the story. In the climactic final scenes as Alison lies possessed by the power of the legend, Michael’s Gwyn stands drenched, consumed with bitterness against his former friends and hurling spiteful invective at Roger. It is a memorable performance.

Michael Holden as Gwyn in scenes from Granada Television’s The Owl Service, with (top left) Dorothy Edwards as Nancy, (top right) Gillian Hills as Alison, (lower left) Francis Wallis as Roger.

Filming the Owl Service (Armada Books, 1970) is filled with anecdotes about the cast and crew as they set about filming on location. The book contains diaries written by Alan Garner’s children, off school for nine weeks, as they watched the series being made. The cast was assembled in Wales in April 1969 for some early rehearsals and to get the feel of the story’s original setting. On Wednesday 16 April the children documented a climb up the mountain to a rock called the Raven Stone (which turned out to be too inaccessible to film). The children’s rather endearing spelling mistakes, preserved in the book, have been corrected here:

Katharine Garner, age 8: It was a long climb. When we got to a stream Gwyn [Michael Holden] said, “My shoes are going to get wet.” So he took them off. Then Alison [Gillian Hills], Griselda [later Alan Garner’s wife] and I went the easiest way, and the rest came up a very steep part. Nancy [Dorothy Edwards] collapsed. So Nancy, Griselda and I didn’t go to the Raven Stone. We followed some tractor tracks to the top of the mountain. Then we waited till the others came down.

Adam Garner, age 10: At the top the wind was so strong that you could lean back into it. The way down was so steep that one of the actors [Michael Holden] slid and wore his, but not his, trousers out. [The trousers belonged to Ray Llewellyn, who plays Huw.] All the time he had bare feet.

Ellen Garner, age 11: I’m sure Gwyn hurt his feet coming down because he didn’t have any shoes on.

The children chronicled the events at Poulton Hall (a Merseyside substitute for a Welsh country house) on Tuesday 13 May 1969. For the programme’s concluding scenes, set in a torrential downpour, Granada employed the local fire brigade as rainmakers.

Ellen: This morning Dad called us from our work to come down and see what was happening.

Adam: Outside was a fire engine to make rain.

Ellen: On the roof of the porch was the camera and a fireman with the hose. It looked as though everybody was going to get very wet.

Adam: We were allowed to play with the hose. I had it on so hard it broke some thin branches of a tree, it shot a long way.

Katherine: Dad took a photograph of us. Then Gwyn had a go and he burst the pipe.

Ellen: After dinner Katharine and I went into the billiard room and Gwyn gave us a box to stand on so that we could see out of the window. They were rehearsing a part where Huw is pulling Roger in the mud.

Katharine: This had to be done lots of times. It was really funny.

Front cover of The Owl Service paperback issued by Penguin Books (Peacock series) in 1969 to coincide with the Granada Television production. Gillian Hills (Alison), Francis Wallis (Roger) and Michael Holden (Gwyn) are pictured in front of Poulton Hall.

In his director’s notes in Filming the Owl Service, Peter Plummer wrote about casting the part of Gwyn:

We had to have a Welsh-speaking Gwyn; after our scouting parties in Wales had produced nothing, we finally ran him to ground at a drama school in London – Michael Holden of the black brows and disturbing eyes, and the generator of more mischief than the rest of the cast put together.

Michael was profiled in the girls’ magazine Jackie (23 May 1970, see below) and recalled the mishaps while making The Owl Service:

“They said I got into more mischief than the three others put together. I’m a bit accident-prone I suppose. Like when the author’s two children had a go with the fire hose. You know there was all that rain in the final episode, well it was provided by these two local fire engines. Not to be outdone, I wanted to try as well, but as soon as I picked the hose up and pointed it at some trees it went all limp. It’d burst about fifty feet back and spewed water everywhere. Not my fault really, but no one’d believe me! It wasn’t clean water, either. They were getting it from a pond, so all through the filming it was literally raining tadpoles! We had to stop now and then to get them out from down our necks.”

Michael Holden interviewed in Jackie (23 May 1970).

Michael’s turn as Gwyn was evidently popular with ITV’s audience.

“There was quite a bit of fan mail, which was flattering, I was chuffed skinny with the first letter I got, but as I was still a student it was hard to find time to answer them properly. I didn’t want people to feel I hadn’t bothered, so I used to get up at about six in the morning and do them then, while I was fresh.”

His other problem was being recognised.

“I don’t like it. Of course, it’s nice to get slightly better service in the local shops, once you’ve had a long chat about the show, but I find being stopped in the street embarrassing.”

In the Birmingham Post (30 March 1970) Peter Plummer wrote about the series’ popularity:

The response to the programme from young people was certainly extraordinary. I only wish I could show you some of their letters. Michael Holden’s fan mail alone ran into three figures and it is still coming in five weeks after the programme has finished.

In the Hull Daily Mail (21 February 1970, below) Michael revealed that he had even received marriage proposals, albeit from an infatuated schoolgirl. “The difficulty is in explaining that, although I am very pleased to have created such interest, I already have a girlfriend.”

Michael Holden interview in the Hull Daily Mail (21 February 1970).

Michael spoke to the TV Times (10-16 January 1970, featuring a wonderfully kitsch photo shoot, below) about the impact The Owl Service had on him.

Brought up in a converted shepherd’s cottage in Snowdonia, 19-year-old [sic] Michael Holden described how the legend took control of them during filming of the serial. “It was an incredible experience for all of us. It was as if we personally were really living the thing. The legend, the spirit of the valley, was so strong that we became obsessed by it. In the evenings we did nothing but talk about it.”

Michael spent several nights in the little village post office before filming began. “I wanted to get the feeling of the place, and learn what the locals thought about the legend,” he said. “I felt very close to the whole thing. The area was so much like where I grew up in Bethesda – and it was nice to go back to being outnumbered by sheep.”

TV Times feature (“Country clothes for owl addicts”, 10-16 January 1970) – Ann Beveridge talks to Gillian Hills, Michael Holden and Francis Wallis.

Gillian Hills, in conversation with Anna Smith on the Gillian Hills – A Life In Art, Film and Music podcast (December 2021), remembered the filming of The Owl Service as “absolute bliss”:

During the breaks I spent a lot of time with Michael Holden, and that was quite naughty because the first time in my life I was laughing uncontrollably when we went filming. You would find us in the bus, totally tearing ourselves apart with balloons of laughter. I don't know about what, but we were just, I think we needed laughter, both of us. And then one day the makeup person appeared and she tapped on the window. She raised her voice and she said, “What are you doing here? You should be concentrating on your work.” And soon she'd come back again. And she said, “You should be concentrating on your voice.” And [when] she said “on your work” and “on your voice” we both collapsed again. We were actually under the seats. We had, I think, the best time together.

As an aside, Alan Garner describes having a mental breakdown during The Owl Service production in his essay Inner Time (original lecture on 26 February 1975, published in The Voice that Thunders, Fourth Estate, 2024). He recounts watching “a delicate climax of the story” being filmed and being enraged by (and almost assaulting) one of the actors who was “genuinely fooling about, genuinely antagonising the cast, the director and the crew” – though Garner is discreet enough not to name him.

In his Jackie interview Michael spoke of his early life in rural Wales.

“My parents moved back when I was a toddler and when I came to go to school I went to Bangor rather than the village school, which was in sight of our house, because all the other kids only spoke Welsh, and at the time I didn’t.”

He told Jackie that he had been spending part of his time at the Phildene Drama School and the rest working as an actor.

What’s Michael planning next?

“Well, I want to finish my course at Drama School. Each time I do some work I have to go back a stage to catch up. I may never get that diploma – they don’t just give ‘em away. There’s a film and a play in the offing. And I want to learn to drive.”

Whether the film and the play came to fruition is unrecorded.

Gillian Hills shared some more recollections of the young actors in the booklet accompanying The Owl Service Network DVD release, her words dated February 2008):

I think all three of us became fairly superstitious during the filming. We slipped into character. Michael was ebullient, talkative. His end was tragic. I am not so sure that acting was everything for him. Not like Francis.

Michael Holden's moment in the media spotlight was all too brief. He is not credited with any fresh television roles after The Owl Service was first broadcast in 1969-70. By a quirk of scheduling, viewers in ITV’s Granada region on Sunday 8 February 1970 would have seen Michael appear in the Barbarian Librarians episode of Please Sir! at 3.25 pm and then again in the concluding episode of The Owl Service at 5.30 pm. It would prove to be his television swansong.

By 1977 Michael was working as a computer programmer in London. But in September that year he returned, shockingly, to the headlines as the victim of a violent murder in a Mayfair pub.

Newspaper front pages with reports of Michael Holden’s murder. Left: “West End pub man battered to death” in the London Evening News (24 September 1977). Right:  “Murder of the quiet man” in the Sunday Mirror (25 September 1977).

The account in the London Evening News (24 September 1977) included the heartbreaking detail that Michael’s grandmother had not yet been informed of his death.

As reported in the Liverpool Echo (24 September 1977):

A bachelor, aged 31, he last worked for Knight Computer Projects, contract programmers, of Old Park Lane, and lived in a flat in Kilburn. He previously lived in Wimbledon.

The Liverpool Daily Post (26 September 1977) said that Michael was a former pupil at Friars Grammar School, Bangor.

A notice of Michael’s death appeared in The Times (30 September 1977).

Turner – on 23rd September, 1977, tragically, whilst living in London, and of Tyddyn Canol, Llanllechid, Bangor, Michael John Ernest Turner (Michael Holden), beloved son of Harold and Ann Susan and devoted brother of Patricia. Funeral service at Glan Ogwen Church, Bethesda, on Tuesday, Oct. 4th, at 2 p.m. Followed by interment, at Coetmor Church Cemetery.

There was further reporting in Newcastle’s The Journal (15 March 1978).

[Michael Holden] died as a result of a fractured skull causing bruising of the brain. A pathologist believed three blows had been struck with great force… The incident occurred about 11 p.m. and Mr Holden was dead by midnight.

Anthony Wright was charged with Michael’s murder. The Times (17 Mar 1978) reported on the initial mistrial.

Anthony Wright, aged 28, … accused of murdering Michael Holden, an actor, must be retried, Mr Justice Willis decided at the Central Criminal Court yesterday when the jury failed to return a verdict after four hours.

The following account of the retrial appeared in the Liverpool Daily Post (26 September 1978):

A soda syphon used to kill North Wales actor Michael Holden was wielded like a tennis player using a racket to serve, an Old Bailey jury was told yesterday. Mr Holden, who appeared in the TV series Please, Sir and Owl Service, died after a moment of “terrible drama” in a Mayfair pub, said Mr Michael Hill, prosecuting. Anthony Patrick Wright, 28, a dealer of Lewis Trust, Warner Road, Camberwell, London, pleaded not guilty to the murder of Michael John Turner – Mr Holden’s real name – on September 23 last year. Mr Hill told the jury that the issue involved was whether Mr Turner’s death was murder or manslaughter.

Mr Hill said Wright and his friend Christopher Perry had been eating and drinking virtually all evening in the “Hard Rock” cafe in Old Park Lane, Mayfair. Afterwards they crossed the road to the Rose and Crown public house, where a video machine competition was in progress. The two men occupied stools at the bar and began making a nuisance of themselves. The landlord asked them to keep quiet and there was an exchange of words. Turner came from the other end of the bar on his way to the lavatory and asked the two men to keep down the noise and not be a nuisance. Afterwards Turner returned to his seat near the door.

Soon afterwards, Wright crossed the bar and went up behind Turner. According to witnesses, he raised a soda syphon like a tennis player using a racket to serve, and brought it down with a crashing blow on Turner’s head, said Mr Hill. “This was a moment of terrible drama,” he said. There was some confusion as to detail but the consensus of opinion was that two or three blows were struck.They were deliberately aimed at the unsuspecting Turner, with great force. Mr Hill said that Turner died from a fractured skull. The trial was adjourned until today. Mr Turner was the son of Mr and Mrs Harold Turner of Tyddyn Canol, LLanllechid. He had been in London for 10 years and last worked for Knight Computer Projects.

Wright was found guilty of murder and jailed for life at the Old Bailey (Daily Mirror, 27 September 1978).

There are curious discrepancies in press reports of Michael’s age. Some accounts, particularly during the murder trial and retrial in 1978, claimed he was 27. In fact he was 31 when he died, as confirmed by the Register of Burials in Glanogwen Church (giving his London address as 1 Hazelmere Road, Kilburn). General Register Office records verify that his date of birth was 15 June 1946. Michael's grave is pictured below.

Photograph from Coetmor Church Cemetery of the gravestone of Michael Turner, known also as the actor Michael Holden, who died aged 31 years on 23 September 1977.

According to the Acton Gazette (3 August 1978) Michael attended the Wendy Wisbey school (formerly the Phildene Stage School, on Rupert Road in Chiswick, London) for about three years. The paper interviewed Diana Bland, joint principal at the school, who reminisced about her former student:

“I remember Michael well. He was a very handsome young man and an extremely promising actor. He had many offers of work. Ironically he gave up the profession because he said it was such an uncertain life. Then he got killed. It was such a tragedy.”

Michael’s co-star Gillian Hills remembered him (Facebook, 19 October 2017) by posting a photograph taken during the filming of the second episode of The Owl Service. These are the garden scenes where her character (Alison) is sunbathing and he (Gwyn) kicks the Mabinogion out of her hands. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she says portentously, before the power of the legend shreds the book and pursues Gwyn into the trees. The posted image (below) shows Michael in an unguarded moment with Gillian as she reclines in her signature red-rimmed sunglasses.

Image shared by Gillian Hills on Facebook on 19 October 2017. Her caption read: The Owl Service. Bending down on the left, cinematographer David Wood, me with my red rimmed glasses, Michael Holden.

Michael Holden died far too young in brutal circumstances. His brief acting career could have faded from memory, save for a leading role in an iconic television production. Those “black brows and disturbing eyes” of Peter Plummer’s description will live on through our enduring fascination with The Owl Service.

Michael Holden (15 June 1946 – 23 September 1977) in scenes from Granada Television’s The Owl Service.