Basil Rathbone was born on 13 June 1892 in Johannesburg, then in the South African Republic, the son of a mining engineer, Edgar Philip Rathbone, and violinist Anna Barbara Rathbone. The family fled to England when Basil was three, after his father was accused by the Boers of spying following the Jameson Raid. He was educated at Repton School before making his stage debut in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in 1911, then served with distinction in the London Scottish and Liverpool Scottish regiments during the First World War, reaching the rank of captain.
Rathbone became a leading Shakespearean stage actor before moving into Hollywood film, appearing in over seventy films across his career, often as a villain. He is best remembered for playing Sherlock Holmes in fourteen Hollywood films between 1939 and 1946 and in an accompanying radio series, more than any other actor has played the role. He won a Tony Award for Best Actor in 1948.
This record has long been listed with a Welsh connection, and readers of this site have pointed out, correctly, that it is not through Rathbone's own birth or upbringing. The genuine link traced by research is through his first wife, actress Ethel Marion Foreman, whom he married in 1914; her family moved to Newport, Monmouthshire in the 1890s, and a house on Serpentine Road there was known locally as "Rathbone House". After she and Basil divorced in 1926, Marion Foreman went on to run the Newport Playgoers amateur dramatic society for some years.
Rathbone died suddenly of a heart attack in New York City on 21 July 1967, aged 75.