'Julia Blake’s interest in drama began early in her life. She says: ‘I was always as a child fascinated by character and character faces and the way people walked … at first I wanted to be an artist and I was always sketching people. I mean always, compulsively’, she told me. As a young girl Julia learned ballet and took elocution lessons. Her parents encouraged her to enjoy the arts as a child in spite of their strict views on refraining from the more hedonistic arts. Blake’s family were conservative Primitive Congregationalists. Her father Fred Blake worked as a commercial artist and Edna was a homemaker who had enjoyed a good education but frowned on women working. Julia was an excellent student and completed an honours degree in drama and French at Bristol University, the only university in the UK that offered drama at that time. Blake’s first significant role was playing Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera in her final year of university. Blake recalls that this experience ‘changed things for me, in that I thought I can do this… And I knew that I was obsessive and passionate about it’.' (Introduction)