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Michael Bentine, CBE (born Michael James Bentin; 26 January 1922〔General Register Office for England and Wales - Birth Register for the March Quarter of 1922, Watford Registration District, Reference 3a 1478, listed as "Michael J. Bentin", mother's maiden name as "Dawkins".〕 – 26 November 1996)〔General Register Office for England and Wales - Death Register for November 1996, Sutton Registration District, Reference C6B 296, listed as "Michael James Bentine" with a date of birth of 26 January 1922.〕 was an English comedian, comic actor and founding member of the Goons. He was a Peruvian Briton.〔 In 1971, Bentine received the Order of Merit of Peru following his fund-raising work for the 1970 Great Peruvian earthquake.〔(Michael Bentine - Biography )〕 ==Biography== Bentine was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, to a Peruvian father, Adam Bentin, and a British mother, Florence Dawkins,〔Oxford Dictionary of National Biography〕 and grew up in Folkestone, Kent. He was educated at Eton College. With the help of speech trainer, Harry Burgess, he overcame a stammer and subsequently developed an interest in amateur theatricals, along with the Tomlinson family, including the young David Tomlinson. He spoke fluent Spanish and French. His father was an early aeronautical engineer for the Sopwith Aviation Company during and after World War I and invented a tensometer for setting the tension on aircraft rigging wires. In World War II, he volunteered for all services when the war broke out (the RAF was his first choice owing to the influence of his father's experience), but was initially rejected because of his father's nationality.〔 He started his acting career in 1940, in a touring company in Cardiff playing a juvenile lead in ''Sweet Lavender''. He went on to join Robert Atkin's Shakespearean company in Regent's Park, London, until he was called up for service in the RAF. He was appearing in a Shakespearean play in doublet and hose in the open-air theatre in London's Hyde Park when two RAF MPs marched on stage and arrested him for desertion. Unknown to him, an RAF conscription notice had been following him for a month as his company toured.〔 Once in the RAF he went through flying training. He was the penultimate man going through a medical line receiving inoculations for typhoid with the other flight candidates in his class (they were going to Canada to receive new aircraft) when the vaccine ran out. They refilled the bottle to inoculate him and the other man as well. By mistake they loaded a pure culture of typhoid. The other man died immediately, and Bentine was in a coma for six weeks. When he regained consciousness his eyesight was ruined, leaving him myopic for the rest of his life. Since he was no longer physically qualified for flying, he was transferred to RAF Intelligence and seconded to MI9, a unit that was dedicated to supporting resistance movements and helping prisoners escape. His immediate superior was the Colditz escapee Airey Neave. At the end of the war, he took part in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He said about this experience: :Millions of words have been written about these horror camps, many of them by inmates of those unbelievable places. I’ve tried, without success, to describe it from my own point of view, but the words won’t come. To me Belsen was the ultimate blasphemy. (''The Reluctant Jester'', Chapter 17.) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Michael Bentine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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