Diana Quick

Diana Marilyn Quick (born 23 November 1946) is an English actress.

Early life and family background

Quick was born in London, England. She grew up in Dartford, Kent, the third of a dentist's four children. She was educated at Dartford Grammar School for Girls, Kent. She was greatly aided by her English teacher, Miss Davis, who encouraged her to pursue acting. She became a member of an amateur dramatic society in Crayford, Kent, while at school as well as appearing in many school productions. On leaving school, she went on in 1964 to pursue further studies at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Quick was the first female president of the Oxford University Dramatic Society.

Quick spent seven years researching a book about her paternal family's life in India which was published in 2009 by Virago with the title "A Tug on the Thread: From the British Raj to the British Stage". This title is possibly a reference to a line in Brideshead Revisited, in which author Evelyn Waugh uses a quote from a short story by G. K. Chesterton to illustrate the nature of Grace. Cordelia, in conversation with Charles Ryder, quotes a passage from the Father Brown detective story "The Queer Feet": "I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread." In her book Quick reveals that she is of mixed race (Anglo-Indian) descent. Her great-grandfather served 23 years in the army in India before becoming a policeman and her great-grandmother had to flee from the Indian Mutiny after her father was killed.