Laurence Irving (set designer)

Squadron Leader Laurence Irving OBE, RDI (11 April 1897 – 23 October 1988) was an artist, book illustrator and Hollywood set designer and art director, the son of actors H. B. Irving and Dorothea Baird, and the biographer of his grandfather, the Victorian era actor Henry Irving. His sister was the actress and founder of the Keep Britain Tidy Campaign, Elizabeth Irving. He lived and died in Wittersham, Kent in 1988, within walking distance of the house, Smallhythe Place, where Dame Ellen Terry lived, who was his grandfather's leading lady at the Lyceum Theatre in London's West End.

Named after his uncle, Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving, Laurence Henry Forster Irving was born in London in 1897. He briefly and unhappily attended Wellington College and later trained as a painter at the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Royal Academy School, studying under Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. On completion of his art training Irving specialised in landscape and marine painting before commencing on his career as a designer for the theatre. He was a pilot in the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) during World War I, ending the War with the rank of Captain. In 1919 be became engaged to Rosalind Woolner, the granddaughter of the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner. They married in 1921.