Career
Edmund Pegge has appeared in a host of popular television series such as When the Boat Comes In, Dr. Who, It Ain't half Hot Mum, The Bill, The Persuaders and Day of the Triffids. He played Bernard Webster in Tenko for the BBC, Lord Burne-Wilkes in Winds of War (starring Robert Mitchum), Eddie Redmayne's father in an episode of Doctors for the BBC and Rosemary & Thyme.
In Australia he appeared in many early ABC TV productions and guest leads in several Crawford productions of Matlock, Division 4 and Homicide. He co-starred with Wendy Hughes and Sam Neil in Lucinda Brayford, with Bill Kerr in Alan Gordon Bennett and played Father Murphy in Home Sweet Home. He has appeared in The Anzacs, Golden Fiddles, The River Kings, Heroes II the Return, Selkie and Black & White. Wolf Creek and Never Too Late, starring Dennis Waterman, Jack Thompson and James Cromwell, are his latest credits.
His theatre credits are also extensive. He began his career with Mark McManus (Taggart) in the Young Elizabethan Players playing Shakespeare to schools all over Australia.
In 1965 he returned to the UK where he did seasons with many repertory companies including Nottingham Playhouse run by John Neville from where he toured South East Asia in A Man for All Seasons and As you Like It. He toured Canada and the USA in Hay Fever and Beau Stratagem for the Theatre Royal, Windsor. He joined Geoff Kenion's company in Palma Mallorca to play Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger and Bernard in Boeing Boeing.
In London he was invited to join the Prospect Theatre Company at the Old Vic where he appeared in St Joan and Anthony and Cleopatra.
In Australia he toured with Edward Woodward and Michelle Dotrice in The Male of the Species and with Hayley and Juliette Mills in Fallen Angels. In 1998 he toured South East Asia in Travels With My Aunt with Roger Lloyd Packand and subsequently returned with performances of poetry at the inaugural Hong Kong Writers' Week.
In Adelaide he played in Colin George's production of Cymbeline and in Three Birds Alighting on a Field for the South Australian State Theatre Company. He sung Noel Coward songs in the Last Night of the Proms at the Adelaide Town Hall.
He has also created two one-man shows: a short version of Under Milk Wood and Shakespeare's Greatest Hits.
Edmund presented programmes of poetry on BBC television for the popular Five to Eleven programme, among them a series on Australian poetry to mark the Australian Bicentenary.
Poetry performances and Creative Writing Workshops
In 1998 Ed set up The Informing Performing Company in Adelaide, South Australia, with Richard Potter.
The Informing Performing Company developed a variety of poetry performances and creative writing workshops for all ages in schools as well as workshops for teachers. Touring extensively throughout South Australia, The Informing Performing Company was invited to the inaugural Writers Festival in Hong Kong.
Shortlisted for the Arts Education Minister's Arts Educators of the Year Award 2002, Edmund Pegge and Richard Potter have developed an international reputation for their work in breathing life into the learning of literature and language.
Evolving out of the above work Edmund published Expressive Speech, a teaching manual with a foreword by Dame Judi Dench. How to Enjoy Reading Aloud To Young Children was a booklet developed from Expressive Speech in the UK. This has sold over 30,000 copies and led to workshops for librarians and parents all over the British Isles and South Australia.
He has also created Poetry Alive!!, a CD of classic poems with the sound recordist Rob Pippan.
And now his memoirs are completed and available, entitled Forever Horatio – An Actor's Life (see in About and Products sections). It has been given a wonderful Foreword by Dame Judi Dench and has been well received by the critics and the general public.