Patience Tomlinson

Patience Tomlinson was born and brought up in North West Norfolk. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and has appeared in a wide variety of roles in theatres all over the country. These include the National Theatre, the West End, the Young Vic and the Pleasance, where she played Mrs Gould in Black ‘ell by Miles Malleson, part of the Forgotten Voices of the Great War season. She recently played Ros in The Heart of Things by Giles Cole at the Jermyn Street theatre and in January 2018 she played Brenda Joy, the Norfolk nymphomaniac, in Imaginationship by Sue Healy at the Finborough Theatre. 

 

Patience is a well-known voice on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and she has made countless broadcasts of plays, poetry, short stories etc, including Isabelle Allende’s novel Paula and Lady Mary Clive’s Christmas with the Savages, both on Book at Bedtime; Gal Audrey by Audrey Whiting and The Letters of Queen Victoria for Woman’s Hour; Giving Up The Ghost by Hilary Mantel, Book of the Week, and five Tales of Victorian Norfolk by Mary Mann, Afternoon Story. 

 

Patience has recorded over 200 audiobooks, including Charles Dickens, A Life by Claire Tomalin; Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell; Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson; A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym; The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules by Catharina Ingleman-Sundberg and Time to be in Earnest, autobiography by PD James. Television includes The Day Today, Friday Night Armistice, In The Red and Shadowplay. Patience has narrated Facade by William Walton at the National Portrait Gallery and an evening of Troubadour Poetry with Mediva in the Purcell Room. She has written and performs a one-woman show called A Tale That Is Told about the brilliant Victorian Norfolk novelist and short story writer, Mary E Mann.