The actor Timothy West, whose profession ranged from Shakespeare, Ibsen and Pinter on stage to TV appearances in Brass, EastEnders and Nice Canal Journeys (together with his spouse, Prunella Scales), has died aged 90.
His youngsters, Juliet, Samuel and Joseph West, stated in an announcement: “After a protracted and extraordinary life on and off the stage, our darling father, Timothy West, died peacefully in his sleep yesterday night. He was 90 years outdated.
“Tim was with family and friends on the finish. He leaves his spouse, Prunella Scales, to whom he was married for 61 years, a sister, a daughter, two sons, seven grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. All of us will miss him terribly.
“We want to thank the unimaginable NHS workers at St George’s hospital, Tooting, and at Avery Wandsworth for his or her loving care throughout his final days.”
Massively well-liked, with a commanding stage presence however unassuming private method, West toured the UK’s regional theatres with the identical adventurous spirit with which he travelled its waterways. “I really feel extra helpful once I’m on the highway, touring this nation and others, enjoying in several theatres, exploring completely different locations, assembly completely different individuals,” he wrote in his witty 2001 memoir A Second In direction of the Finish of the Play. “It’s no option to get wealthy, or well-known, and it drives my agent mad, however I like it.”
There have been many tributes paid to West after information of his demise. The author and broadcaster Gyles Brandreth posted on Instagram: “A marvellous man – a marvellous actor, husband, father, pal. On stage, on display, on a canal boat, on the top of a pier (he cherished a seaside pier!), within the backyard with a glass of wine, he was simply one of the best. The nice Timothy West has died at 90: what a worthwhile, well-filled life.”
Dame Joanna Lumley, who campaigned alongside West to destigmatise dementia, as his spouse Scales has had vascular dementia for over 20 years, stated he was “an enormous loss to everyone.”
”I feel between them, Timothy and Pru did a tremendous, wonderful job of convincing folks that dementia was not one thing that you have to be all the time afraid of, however one thing that you would embrace and reside with and reside with nicely.” she advised Instances Radio.
West performed main roles in Uncle Vanya, Dying of a Salesman, The Grasp Builder, Lengthy Day’s Journey into Evening, Macbeth and, on 4 events, King Lear. He additionally grew to become recognized for portraying real-life characters on stage and display, such because the designer William Morris and conductor Thomas Beecham, in addition to political figures together with Mikhail Gorbachev, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill.
An everyday presence on tv for the reason that Nineteen Sixties, he performed the eponymous king in Edward the Seventh in 1975, was the beekeeper in a sticky state of affairs in Royal Jelly (certainly one of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Surprising) in 1980 and had roles in variations of Charles Dickens’s novels Laborious Instances, Oliver Twist and Bleak Home. Laborious Instances, broadcast in 1977, was parodied within the 1983 TV sequence Brass, the place West performed the self-made northern businessman Bradley Hardacre. He was made a CBE in 1984.
Maybe his biggest TV success got here with Nice Canal Journeys, a humorous and shifting sequence that was steered by his household’s ardour for narrowboats. Starring West and Scales (whom he married in 1963) The programme, was notable for exploring how the pair navigated Scales’s experiences of dementia. “She will be able to’t keep in mind issues very nicely, however you don’t have to recollect issues on the canal,” he stated. “You possibly can simply get pleasure from issues as they occur – so it’s good for her.”
West had a daughter, Juliet, together with his first spouse, Jacqueline Boyer. Their marriage resulted in divorce. He and Scales had two sons, Samuel and Joseph. Samuel starred alongside his father on a number of events on stage and display, West movies included The Day of the Jackal (1973) and Cry Freedom (1987).
Born in Bradford to actor mother and father Lockwood West and Olive Carleton-Crowe, he had an itinerant early childhood due to the household commerce. Through the second world warfare the household settled in Bristol (West’s stage debut would come reverse his mother and father within the constabulary’s 1943 panto.) He usually performed truant and was expelled from college, however frequently attended performances on the Little theatre in Bristol.
After directing an award-winning scholar manufacturing of Thornton Wilder’s Our City in Bristol he left his job as a high quality management engineer at EMI to develop into an assistant stage supervisor at Wimbledon theatre in London; he was quickly taking to the stage in steadily larger roles. Within the Nineteen Sixties, he appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Firm and, for Prospect theatre firm, performed Samuel Johnson (reverse Julian Glover as James Boswell). Alongside that manufacturing, he starred in The Tempest for Prospect, enjoying Prospero.
On a later Prospect tour he had the roles of Bolingbroke in Shakespeare’s Richard II and Mortimer in Marlowe’s Edward II, with each title roles performed by Ian McKellen. It was with Prospect that West first performed Lear, aged 37. His fourth time within the position got here in 2016 in the course of the EU referendum – becoming for a play about “tearing up the map, outdated individuals making a disastrous resolution and letting the youthful individuals kind it out”, he stated.
In 2013 West had a small position in Coronation Road and in 2014 he first appeared on EastEnders as Stan Carter, a personality he performed for greater than a yr. His latest TV credit included Gentleman Jack.