Stanley Baxter Tribute Grows Henry Dawe’s 100-Year Project

Henry Dawe has added a stanley baxter tribute to his centenary poems project. The actor and comic would have turned 100 on Sunday, May 24.

Dawe, from Uppingham, has spent the year writing and performing poems about people born 100 years ago. He has already marked the lives of David Attenborough, Queen Elizabeth II, Kenneth Williams and Eric Morcambe, keeping the project fixed on a narrow idea: one centenary, one portrait, one performance.

Dawe’s centenary run

The latest addition extends a run that has already moved beyond poetry into performance. On May 16, Kenny! – The Kenneth Williams Centenary Musical was performed at Uppingham Theatre, giving the project a stage presence as well as a page presence.

Dawe’s earlier work also reached beyond the centenary format. He wrote poetry to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee, and he wrote a song paying tribute to The Duke of Edinburgh. Those works raised money for The Silver Line charity for older people, so the project has operated as both memorial and fundraiser.

Stanley Baxter at 100

That combination makes the Baxter tribute feel less like a one-off and more like a continuing catalogue of remembrance. Dawe has built a small repertory around notable figures, and Baxter now joins a list that already includes some of the most recognisable names in British public life.

For readers tracking what happens next, the practical answer is simple: Dawe is still adding to the series, and Baxter’s centenary is the new fixed point. A tribute poem dated to Sunday, May 24 gives the project another clear marker, and it keeps the focus on a performer whose 100th birthday arrives at the centre of that sequence.