Forthright to a fault

Her mother was Ellen Terry, the most admired actress of the day. Her brother was Edward Gordon Craig, the celebrated stage designer. Little wonder then that Edith Craig was overshadowed for most of her life by two such towering figures.

Yet her theatrical achievements were substantial. She was a talented costume designer and maker, the founder of the radical theatre group the Pioneer Players, and an indefatigable producer and director of countless plays and pageants. She was also an important figure in the suffrage movement, staging many feminist plays, and lived in a famous artistic lesbian ménage-à-trois. After her mother’s death she turned her cottage, Smallhythe Place in Kent, into a permanent museum dedicated to her memory, and established the Barn Theatre in the garden, where leading West End actors such as her cousin John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft and Edith Evans took part in an annual summer performance.