Eliot's play, A Cocktail Party, to a secret agent in the television versions of two spy stories by John Le Carre; and second, his
chameleon-like quality: he was "a man of many faces," and when he entitled a volume of memoirs My Name Escapes Me he made his mark in a number of comic films, including one called Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which he displayed his versatility by playing the entire d'Ascoyne family, both males and females, in his own words "eight speaking parts, one non-speaking cameo, and a portrait in oils." A few years later he gave a memorable performance in The Prisoner as a Cardinal under p ressure from his Communist captors to confess to crimes which he had not committed.