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Anna Maxwell Martin, Raad Rawi and Luke Treadaway star in the first of a season of factual dramas exploring the history of oil - and the price we've paid for it. This is the colourful tale of how British Oil was thrown out of post-war Iran. Anglo-Persian Oil (later BP) was specially formed to exploit the 60-year oil concession to drill for oil, which was signed in 1901 by the then Shah of Persia. Prompted by Winston Churchill, the British Government bought 51% of the company's shares. Persian oil soon became Britain's "single largest overseas asset". But in 1951, newly-elected Prime Minister Mossadegh declared the concession 'immoral', unilaterally cancelled it, and on 1st May successfully passed a law which nationalised Anglo-Persian - and all the oil. There are riots, demonstrations, and a blockade of shipping. And in the great oil refinery on the island of Abadan, a shocked British ex-pat community struggle to understand the new world which has j...

Anna Maxwell Martin , the steely star of the BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, is to take up the daggers as Lady Macbeth when she makes her debut at the Young Vic in a radical new production, opposite her stage husband John Heffernan . Macbeth, which will open at London’s  Young Vic  in November and then transfer to the partner theatres,  Birmingham Rep  and  Home  in Manchester, will feature a company of actors and dancers. It is being jointly created by director Carrie Cracknell and choreographer Lucy Guerin, who brought an acclaimed  Medea  to the  National Theatre  last year. Heffernan, also appearing for the first time at the  Young Vic , recently starred in the RSC Oppenheimer, and in the BBC’s gothic fantasy adaptation of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and as Edward II at the National Theatre. Maxwell Martin, who won early critical acclaim with a six-hour performance as Lyra in the National Theatre’s sell-ou...

HE IS television's hottest hunk and now a second Beverley actress is to star alongside him. Aidan Turner set pulses racing as the star of BBC hit series Poldark, when he appeared alongside Eleanor Tomlinson, also from Beverley. Now, Turner is to head the cast in another major BBC One series, this time starring another Beverley actress – double Bafta award-winner Anna Maxwell Martin. Maxwell Martin and Turner are in a stellar cast lined up for a BBC One adaptation of the Agatha Christie thriller And Then There Were None, due to be broadcast over Christmas. The adaptation of the bestselling crime novel features stars including Miranda Richardson, Charles Dance and Sam Neill and is expected to be another BBC hit. Retired Beverley High School teacher Helen Gallifant remembers Beverley actres- ses Anna and Eleanor from their days at the girls' secondary in the town. She said: "I'm sure a lot of people in Beverley will be following both Anna and Eleanor's careers. ...

Wave goodbye to Downton Abbey, say hello to Anna Maxwell-Martin as a country vicar with a sideline in exorcisms in ITV’s new supernatural drama. Midwinter of the Spirit, commissioned for the ITV Encore drama channel, stars the Bafta-winning Maxwell-Martin as vicar Merrily Watkins, a single mother whose newly acquired training has put her on “the dark side of the pulpit.” ITV said: “She’s become one of the few women priests working as an exorcist - a job increasingly mistrusted by the modern Church and rarely talked about, even though it operates in virtually every diocese in the UK.” David Threlfall plays Rev Huw Owen, a deliverance ministry tutor and Merrily’s mentor. Based on Phil Rickman’s novels, the screenwriter is Stephen Volk whose banned BBC play Ghostwatch was recently voted by viewers one of the scariest TV moments of all time. ITV hopes the initial 3-part serial, set in motion when a man is found murdered in the most horrific circumstances imaginable and Merrily beco...