Written 2007 by Roger Langley;   published by Tomahawk Press;  340 pages;  450 pictures

ISBN-10: 0-9531926-4-4; ISBN-13:978-0-9531926-4-9          www.tomahawkpress.com

Press Release

Magazine review April 7 2008 - extracts - read whole article

As a Patrick McGoohan fan myself, I was delighted to come across this wonderful book while attending the recent launch of James Robertson Justice's biography "What's The Bleeding Time?" at Pinewood Studios. A great friend of Peter Falk, Patrick starred in, directed and wrote for Columbo and is acknowledged as making a large contribution to the show's success. So why is so little known about the man who was responsible for the cult series The Prisoner — a landmark series first shown in the UK in the late Sixties that changed the history of television and has inspired many other dramas up to the present day?

Patrick McGoohan shuns publicity and is fiercely protective of his privacy, so that this very private man is the subject of a book is a stroke of luck for the star's many admirers around the world — the author, although a busy lawyer, has been a principal organiser of the Appreciation Society for The Prisoner during its thirty-year life and continues to publish the society's magazines.

With 450 rare and exclusive photographs, Patrick McGoohan: Danger Man Or Prisoner? looks at the actor's personal and public life. With an impressive cv of stage, television and screen productions — directing, writing, acting, producing and various collaborations — Patrick McGoohan is often declared to be one of the best actors to have ever come out of Britain. Yet, the obsessive protection of his privacy and often conflicting and provocative remarks made to the press over the years has created a need to set the record straight. Having lived in the US for the past thirty years — he has a dual US passport — Patrick is a clean-living family man with a solid marriage to former actress Joan Drummond since 1951.

This first-ever biography of Patrick McGoohan, Patrick McGoohan: Danger Man Or Prisoner? details his classic television series Danger Man and The Prisoner and explains why McGoohan — the top choice for James Bond — turned down the role. The book also looks at his relationships with the actors and directors with whom he has worked. Orson Welles was his mentor and Paul Eddington introduced Patrick to Joan.

In Patrick McGoohan: Danger Man Or Prisoner? Roger Langley un-ravels the myths separating the man from his on-screen creations. Now available from all good bookshops at an RRP of £19.99, the book is published in paperback by Tomahawk Press of Sheffield. ISBN-10:0-9531926-4-4; ISBN-13: 978-0-9531926-4-9.
Patrick McGoohan: Danger Man Or Prisoner? has a number of inter-esting Appendices: Complete Patrick McGoohan Screenography of Films, Television, Theatre and Radio; Episode Guides To Rafferty, Columbo, The Prisoner and Danger Man, with Original UK and US Broadcast Dates; Film and Television Productions he Directed; Order of Episodes Of The Prisoner; Questionnaire Completed By Patrick McGoohan in the early 60s; About The Writer.

Roger Langley has been a principal organiser of the Appreciation Society for The Prisoner during its thirty-year life. He has written The Prisoner in Portmeirion (1999), The Prisoner Series Guide (2005) and the latest US Prisoner DVD Megaset booklet. Langley has produced numerous periodicals devoted to The Prisoner and continues to publish the Appreciation Society's magazines.

    Cult viewing Mar 29 2008 by Darren Devine, Western Mail - extracts - read whole article

With its air of mystery and paranoia that fed into the burgeoning 1960s drugs culture, the broadcasting of The Prisoner was a defining moment in the history of TV. As fans prepare for the 40th anniversary reunion at Portmeirion, Darren Devine examines its enduring appeal.

Speaking before the 40th anniversary convention in Portmeirion, coordinator Roger Langley said,
"In the very first episode he (McGoohan) tells the village leader his own date of birth.
"He tells the village leader he was born on March 19, 1928, and he’s got nothing to say, which is a famous line.
"He goes on to say, ‘I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered’. So it was kind of a play on the student protests at that time.
"In America they had huge protests involving students defying the establishment. I think a lot of it rubbed off on McGoohan.
"In interviews he always talked about how prisoners in the Vietnamese war looked brainwashed. His own village was meant to signify the sort of places where prisoners with secrets can be held and not be subject to the law.
"The show’s as relevant today as it was in the 1960s."

Mr Langley, a retired solicitor and author of the recent book Patrick McGoohan, Danger Man or Prisoner, said,
"The week of the last episode when Number One was unveiled the country was on the edge of its seat waiting to see who it was.
"Some people drove in their cars to other areas with a portable TV and parked in lay-bys in order to pick up the signal from another ITV region because they couldn’t wait.
"Such was the power of the programme because there had been nothing like it before and many say it was the first real TV classic and there’s been nothing like it since.
"It relied upon the audience asking questions about it instead of just sitting back and watching the latest special effects or their favourite actor in some new sit-com or drama."

Mr Langley added,
"In the final episode (Fall Out) there is just general mayhem with a big underground trial of the prisoner and it occupied two huge sound stages at MGM studios and was the most expensive TV production there at the time.
"When it got to about episode 13 the story editor Markstein, who was himself a wartime correspondent, left because he was fed up with McGoohan. He said McGoohan wanted to control everything.
"From that point onwards McGoohan went to America to film Ice Station Zebra and when he came back they decided to cut the planned 26 episodes down to 17 and just made four more."

www.yorkshirepost.co.uk:80/books/Review-Patrick-McGoohan-Danger-Man.3688671.jp

18 January 2008

www.visimag.com/filmreview

Free Radical magazine (New Zealand) issue 78 - December 2007 4 page interview with Roger Langley - printed and online editions available by subscription: www.freeradical.co.nz

TV Film Memorabilia magazine

January 2008 issue

December 2007

January 2008 # 165

The Western Mail article

The Independent newspaper article (part)

Whether a remake needs to be quintessentially British or not, not all the series' fans will be disappointed that another proposal has hit the buffers, according to Roger Langley, principal organiser of Six of One, "the official Prisoner Appreciation Society". "They tend to fall into two camps," he says. "The ones who want to see a remake are the ones who feel cheated that McGoohan never got to make a second series, as was originally intended, in which Number Six would escape and go out into the world while being pursued by his ex-captors.

"And then there are the fans who feel the original series should be left alone – that no one should desecrate this work of art, and that McGoohan was and is the only possible Number Six."

The index of Langley's new biography, Patrick McGoohan: Danger Man or Prisoner?, provides a useful summary of the various projected Prisoner remakes, starting back in the mid-1980s when CBS mooted an American version of the series.

Brighton Magazine          MIKE COBLEY, 1st November, 2007   

Surely no-one is better qualified than Roger Langley to write Danger Man or Prisoner? - a biography of the renowned actor, Patrick McGoohan.
Roger has, for the best part of three decades, been the principal organiser of the Appreciation Society for The Prisoner.
The Prisoner was, of course, the seminal TV series of the 60's, which ran for just seventeen episodes and is still, even today, revered and debated by fans and academics alike.
But, as Danger Man Or Prisoner? reveals, Patrick McGoohan was much more than a one-trick pony.
In fact McGoohan, soon to enter his ninth decade, has enjoyed a distinguished career, spanning theatre, cinema and television.
His pre-Prisoner series, Danger Man, even saw McGoohan pre-empt 007's catchphrase with: 'My name is Drake, John Drake'.
McGoohan choose his professional roles carefully. He liked to have both artistic and moral control over his storylines.
He also commanded an obsessive like control over his private life.
His absence from the media glare meant his enigma created many myths about the man.
So it falls to Langley's Danger Man or Prisoner? to set the record straight on Patrick McGoohan's behalf.
Langley's book is heavyweight in its authority but everyman in its voice.
The author's depth of knowledge and heartfelt love for his subject glosses over the sometimes untainted picture he paints of the Sheffield-born, McGoohan.
The book is also a treasure trove of documentation and rarely seen photos.
Langley had accumulated them during his three decades as head of the aforementioned Appreciation Society for The Prisoner.
McGoohan's time on The Prisoner is exhaustively investigated by Langley.
Seemingly those who worked alongside McGoohan have sketched two very different idents of the actor at work.
Some say he was self-opinionated and difficult to work with, others had nothing but the utmost admiration for the man.
Patrick McGoohan was a man who needed to be given time to be able to get to the heart of his true personality.
Spend some time with Roger Langley's Danger Man Or Prisoner? and you'll come away feeling you know what truly makes the heartbeat inside this extraordinary and quite unique British actor of ours.

18th October, 2007 - Review of "Patrick McGoohan: Danger Man or Prisoner"

2007 is the 40th anniversary of the Prisoner TV series, starring Patrick McGoohan. Probably one of the best books of the year is now on sale which charts the career and background of this famous actor of television and films. Written by Roger Langley, with foreword by Peter Falk, star of Columbo. Author Roger Langley has been principal organizer of the Prisoner Appreciation Society for the last 30 years. The book is a must for all Patrick McGoohan fans of which there are thousands worldwide. The book also features some rare and exclusive photographs. "Patrick McGoohan: Danger Man or Prisoner", unravels the myths, separating the man from his on screen creations.

STEVE MARSHALL, Editor-In-Chief, European Radio Features review for the Book Review Programme broadcast on radio stations across Europe

17th September, 2007 - Review by DAVID BARRIE, Six of One founder member, The Prisoner Appreciation Society (Hon. Pres. Patrick McGoohan)

This must be for McGoohan fans that most eagerly awaited of all books. A biography. And what a biography. This well structured work glitters, every page well composed, literate, and absorbing, every fact meticulously researched and detailed. Does this work do justice to this most private and retiring of actors? The answer is an emphatic 'Yes'. McGoohan is a man who acts, he is not a publicity seeking celebrity. A man with deep uncompromising beliefs, who in essence shuns the limelight, preferring to let his work speak for itself. This biography respects the man and his privacy, striking exactly the right note in the telling of this extraordinarily gifted man's life. This is a work undertaken with both affection and respect.

Preceded by a foreword written by Patrick McGoohan's great friend, Peter Falk, and coming in at some 280 pages, complemented by seven highly detailed and factual appendices, plus index, totalling a further 60 pages, this work will surely stand as the ultimate correlation and summarisation of McGoohan's career and achievements. There is no doubt that this book has been a labour of love for the author, and it is obvious that this work has involved many years of dedicated sourcing, gathering and cataloguing of strands of information. I thought I'd digested just about everything McGoohan had said on 'The Prisoner' for example. Transpires I was very wrong. I was astonished that I'd missed so much, yet it was all caught by the writer here.

The author has painstakingly gathered from seemingly every article, every quote, every conversation, that McGoohan has given. His research has taken him to interview many of the characters that McGoohan has come into contact with during his life. Apart from those who worked on both 'Danger Man' and 'The Prisoner', Langley has even interviewed contemporaries from McGoohan's youth in Sheffield. Collected together we hear evocative stories recalling the early years spent there. Yes, it's that kind of book. Thorough comes close. Every quote, every aside, is comprehensively referenced. The joy is that the writing is accessible, and excites the reader, as we are treated to an almost spectator like view of the life of McGoohan, the incidents, both insignificant and towering, that have not only shaped McGoohan's life, but have propelled him to the career and rightful critical acclaim deserved. Reading this book we understand a little of what makes the man. Never intrusive, the author preserves the man's privacy; however by the time I concluded this book, I understood far better what makes McGoohan tick than anything and everything I'd read or seen or heard ever before, if all collected as one.

To give an indication of just what an engrossing read this book is, I received the book on a Thursday, and had devoured it - including appendices - by Monday night. The narrative drive is clear, never straying unnecessarily, the writing concise, professional and human. The sheer scale of the work will ensure it becomes invaluable for anyone wanting to know more about McGoohan.

And what of McGoohan, what would this shy, reticent man make of it I wonder. In this writer's view it is the book he would secretly be proud of, perhaps even have written himself if he were so minded. In these days of elevating celebrities and then roasting them, both McGoohan, and this book, strike the right note. The actor has always valued his private world, and this biography carefully and sensitively knows where to draw a line.

This work naturally has at its core both 'Danger Man' and 'The Prisoner', yet so much else is explored, professionally: McGoohan's early days in repertory in Sheffield, his career which brought him to the defining role of 'Brand', and all the other films and performances, whether early or post-Prisoner, in previous accounts merely mentioned briefly, or glossed over. His 80 years are brought vividly to life, his thoughts, views, feeling, beliefs, are all represented, all add rich colour, and allow us to understand McGoohan a little better. Yet we are left comfortable, with the feeling we are not intruding into the personal side of his life.

From his early years, the background of his parents, early jobs prior to his discovery of acting, meeting wife-to-be Joan Drummond, the casting of 'Brand', 'Danger Man', 'The Prisoner' and beyond, all aspects are treated with the right note of discretion, informing yet not intrusive.

The calibre of the writing, and the carefully crafted choice of words, demonstrate that much thought was given to the rhythm, structure and timbre of each sentence. Take the following from page 152, when analysing the themes explored in the Prisoner: "The episodes present an impressive array of topics: democracy and drugs; torture and technology; power and politics; misinformation and the military; incarceration and individualism; conformity and the community; society and survival; identity and independent thought; force and freedom; religion and rebellion; education and escape; violence and values; science and security; hallucinations and heroism; authority and art; weaponry and will; brainwashing and beliefs; censorship and coercion; jingoism and justice; psychology and peace; loyalty and love; danger and death." With nearly 50 different themes mentioned, I boggle at how long it took to come up such an impressive and alliterative array.

Again, illustrating the depth of thought that has gone into this work, the author quotes a reporter as saying of 'The Prisoner', "The first TV show to prove that the journey is more important than the destination…" Langley comments on this quote, "McGoohan achieved something with 'The Prisoner' which is often missed by reviewers: he created the vogue for a deeper analysis of mainstream television." This is true, and I'm not sure that element has been articulated before.

Liberally distributed throughout the book are scores of photographs, many of which have never been seen before. These include images of every film poster and virtually every role undertaken by the actor - right back to youth club days. From McGoohan himself there are several messages, each giving us a little insight into this man's way of thinking. With an additional 50 pages of appendices - surely some sort of screenography in its own right - my guess is that this section's material will be referred to, and plundered, for years to come. This is the benchmark, the research is exhaustive, every scrap of information ever available has been catalogued and presented in its natural and rightful place. This must be the ultimate work on McGoohan, every page brimming with material, never a sentence wasted or ill-used.

By now you will have deduced that this reviewer highly recommends this biography. You will be as captivated as I was. I suspect that it will also bring a quiet nod of appreciation from its subject. My guess is that Mr. McGoohan will even be quietly pleased. How fortunate that this biography of a man of principle, beliefs, ideals, modesty, and dedication, has been written by someone who also understands these attributes. Believe me, this is a book that you'll certainly be reaching for, again and again. Don't think twice.

“McGoohan was the Orson Welles of British television. A radical; an enfant terrible. He had total control and created something truly extraordinary. So, of course, they closed him down!”
DONOVAN

“He is a very intelligent actor whom I admired as a kid. I watched Danger Man and The Prisoner and all these things on television which he conceived.”
MEL GIBSON

“...the most underrated, under-appreciated talent on the face of the globe. ...I have never played a scene with another actor who commanded my attention the way Pat did.”
PETER FALK

“...one of the big actors of his generation... he was tremendous... required attributes: looks, intensity, unquestionable acting ability and a twinkle in his eye...”
ORSON WELLES