Career
He also played Merlin in the British Broadcasting Corporation television series The Legend of King Arthur, and the tragic ferryman in The Storyteller episode "The Luck Child". Born in Japan to English parents, Edwin Eddison and Hilda Muriel Leadham, he had a twin brother Talbot Leadam Eddison. As his paternal great-grandfather Henry Billington Tatham"s name suggests, he was a descendant of the Billington family who came to America from England on the Mayflower.
During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy, including a time aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious.
Eddison was known for his resonant, baritone voice and long, lean figure. He performed William Shakespeare and other classics, was noted for his Hamlet at the Old Vic, and later playing the comic roles of Feste and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, and King Lear on the New York stage.
He was also a familiar figure in plays by Ibsen, Chekhov, and Sophocles, and played Canon Chasuble in Oscar Wilde"s The Importance of Being Earnest. Eddison also made his mark in radio, in countless British Broadcasting Corporation dramas through the decades, with some of his last roles including Death in The Canterbury Tales and parts in an adaptation of Japanese Noh plays.