Paul's Cathedral I browsed the memorial tablets to Alec Guinness, John Gielgud and Punch and Judy.

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The original film version of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is a seven-hour 1979 BBC series that starred Alec Guinness.

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October finds the NFT celebrating Alec Guinness, whose acting career spanned almost the entire 50 years of the film theatre's existence.

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And, in the ancient corner, Alec Guinness, in a performance no less Buddha-like, in its opaque yet disarming sagacity, than it seemed thirty-two years ago.

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Another notable success came in 1948 when he devised the make-up that Alec Guinness used to portray Fagin in David Lean's film of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.

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Now Sir Kenneth Branagh, he joins the ranks of fellow thespians such as Alec Guinness, Patrick Stewart and Laurence Olivier, who he played in last year's My Week With Marilyn.

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And with that the "Alec Guinness" question is dispatched.

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Reminiscent of scenes from the 1951 film "The Man in the White Suit, " in which Sir Alec Guinness plays a scientist who invents a fabric that never needs cleaning, the scientists have developed a textile that cleans itself.

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