Paul is a long established and much respected British actor and voiceover artist.
Born in Denby Dale, West Riding of Yorkshire, on 25th November 1944 he grew up beside a dairy farm.
His father, Harold, was involved with local amateur dramatic productions, as were the rest of his family.
He went to Penistone Grammar School, then the Northern Counties College of Education in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he received an Associate of the Drama Board (ADB) in Drama.
He taught English and Drama in Walthamstow, before he joined the Leeds Playhouse Theatre-in-education Company in 1971.
In 1976, Paul won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a New Play for his role in John Wilson's For King and Country.
With many and varied roles to follow, Paul soon established himself as one of the UK's leading stage, film, television and radio actors.
In 2011-2015 Paul gained worldwide recognition appearing in 16 episodes of the hugely popular television series Downton Abbey playing the popular role of farmer Mr Mason.
Paul is married to the actress Natasha Pyne.
They married in 1972, after both performing in a Leeds Playhouse production of Frank Wedekind's Lulu, adapted by Peter Barnes, directed by Bill Hays in 1971.
The Crawley family goes on a grand journey to the south of France to uncover the mystery of the dowager countess's newly inherited villa. Meanwhile, a Hollywood director seeks to film his latest production at Downton.
While searching for her missing mother, intrepid teen Enola Holmes uses her sleuthing skills to outsmart big brother Sherlock and help a runaway lord.
The popular musical is brought to life on soundstages at London's Three Mills Studio, in a live TV dramatisation of the timeless story of Maria and the Von Trapp Family singers, one of the world's best-known concert groups in the era immediately preceding World War II.
Hornblower must deliver a French nobleman to a secret rendezvous near Brest, all while coping with enemy agents in his own ranks.
Hornblower and the other officers of the Renown must return to Jamaica to face a court-martial and possible execution for their actions in relieving their unstable captain.
Hornblower and his comrades come under the command of a revered but mentally unstable captain and are forced to mutiny in order to save their ship, the HMS Renown.
Lieutenant Hornblower and his shipmates are sent to accompany a doomed royalist invasion of revolutionary France.
Acting Lieutenant Hornblower and his crew are captured by the enemy while escorting a Duchess who has secrets of her own.
Acting Lieutenant Hornblower attempts to study for his promotion examination, but becomes distracted by the serious supply problems that face his crew.
Portsmouth, 1794. Under thundery skies and in lashing rain, 17-year-old midshipman Horatio Hornblower takes the first tentative steps of his naval career, but a feud with a shipmate causes complications.
In late 19th-century England, Jude aspires to be an academic, but is hobbled by his blue-collar background. Instead, he works as a stonemason and is trapped in an unloving marriage to a farmer's daughter named Arabella. But when his wife leaves him, Jude sees an opportunity to improve himself. He moves to the city and begins an affair with his married cousin, Sue, courting tragedy every step of the way.
A rule-bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.
A journalist investigates a newspaper story of the execution of an Arab princess.
The story of Operation Market Garden—a failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of WWII to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in Holland allowing access over the Rhine into Germany. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure.