Costume design by Leslie Hurry for Thomas Becket in Becket by Jean Anouilh as performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, 1961. Thomas Becket was played by Eric Porter.

Leslie Hurry (1909-1978) trained at the Royal Academy and during the 1930s became known as a surrealist painter. A one-man show in London in 1942 was seen by the theatre director, Michael Benthall, who recommended Hurry to the dancer and choreographer, Robert Helpmann, then planning a ballet based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. The success of his designs set Hurry on a second career as one of the most distinguished theatre designers of his generation. He designed operas, ballets and plays, notably Swan Lake for the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1943, a production which stayed in the repertoire for thirty years; Venice Preserv'd for Peter Brook (1953); the Ring Cycle at Covent Garden (1954), and Troilus and Cressida at Stratford for Peter Hall (1960), famous for being staged in a sand pit.

The play, Becket or The Honour of God, by Jean Anouilh is an ironical view of the relationship between King Henry II and Thomas à Becket used for the playwright’s own debate. As he wrote in the programme note ‘I hope the English will forgive me…for never bothering to find out what Henry II or even Becket was really like. I created the King I wanted and the ambiguous Becket I needed.’ Anouilh’s play was translated into English by Lucienne Hill and directed by Peter Hall for Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, London, where it opened on 11 July
1961. It transferred to the Globe Theatre, London, and first performed on 13 December 1961.

Leslie Hurry’s set and costume designs came in for considerable discussion by the critics. Philip Hope Wallace in the Guardian (13 July 1961) considered the scenery had weight and splendour that served Hall’s approach to the play as a ‘large chronicle play’.

Costumes were made by Bonn and Mackenzie.