Timothy West, star of stage, screen and television, dies at age 90 | Timothy West

Actor Timothy West, whose career ranged from Shakespeare, Ibsen and Pinter on stage to television appearances in Brass, EastEnders and Great Canal Journeys (with his wife, Prunella Scales), has died aged 90.

His children Juliet, Samuel and Joseph West said in a statement issued by his agent: “After a long and extraordinary life on and off the stage, our beloved father Timothy West passed away peacefully in his sleep last night. He was 90 years old.

“Tim was with friends and family at the end. He is survived by his wife Prunella Scales, to whom he was married for 61 years, a sister, a daughter, two sons, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. We will all miss him terribly.

“We would like to thank the incredible NHS staff at St George’s Hospital, Tooting and Avery Wandsworth for their loving care in his final days.”

Hugely popular, with an imposing stage presence but unassuming personal manner, West toured the country’s regional theaters with the same sense of adventure as he traveled its waterways. “I feel more useful when I’m on the road, touring this country and others, playing in different theaters, exploring different places, meeting different people,” he wrote in his witty 2001 memoir A Moment Towards the End of the Play … ” It’s no way to get rich or famous, and it drives my agent crazy, but I love it.”

West starred in Uncle Vanya, Death of a Salesman, The Master Builder, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Macbeth and on four occasions King Lear. He also became known for portraying real-life characters on stage and screen, such as designer William Morris and conductor Thomas Beecham, as well as political figures including Mikhail Gorbachev, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill.

A regular on television since the 1960s, he played the eponymous king in Edward the Seventh in 1975, was a beekeeper in a sticky situation in Royal Jelly (one of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected) in 1980 and had roles in adaptations of Charles Dickens’ novels Hard Times, Oliver Twist and Bleak House. Aired in 1977, Hard Times was parodied in the 1983 TV series Brass, in which West played self-made northern businessman Bradley Hardacre. He was appointed CBE in 1984.

Perhaps his greatest television success came with Great Canal Journeys, a funny and touching series driven by his family’s passion for narrowboats. Starring West and Scales (whom he married in 1963), it first aired in 2014. The programme, which found the couple traveling with friends including Sheila Hancock, Andrew Sachs and Gyles Brandreth, was notable for exploring how the couple navigated Scales’ experiences with dementia. . “She doesn’t remember things very well, but you don’t have to remember things on the channel,” he said. “You can just enjoy things as they happen – so it’s perfect for her.”

West had a daughter, Juliet, with his first wife, Jacqueline Boyer. Their marriage ended in divorce. He and Scales had two sons, Samuel and Joseph. Samuel starred alongside his father on several occasions on stage and screen, including playing the son (and cloned sons) of West’s character in Caryl Churchill’s play A Number. Timothy and Samuel starred together in Henry IV Part I (as Falstaff and Hal respectively) on a UK tour, and they played younger and older versions of the same character in the film Iris (2001). West senior’s other films included The Day of the Jackal (1973) and Cry Freedom (1987).

His parents were actors Lockwood West and Olive Carleton-Crowe. Born in Bradford, where his father performed on stage, he had an itinerant early childhood due to the family trade. During World War II, the family settled in Bristol, where his father joined the War Reserve Police. (West’s stage debut came opposite his parents in the 1943 Police Officer panto.) He was a frequent truant and expelled from school, but regularly attended performances at the Little Theater in Bristol.

After directing an award-winning student production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in Bristol, he left his job as a quality control engineer at EMI to become assistant stage manager at the Wimbledon theater in London; he soon took to the stage in progressively larger roles. In the 1960s he appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company and played for the Prospect theater company Samuel Johnson (opposite Julian Glover as James Boswell). Alongside that production he starred in The Tempest for Prospect, playing 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 both title roles played by Ian McKellen. It was with Prospect that West first played Lear, aged 37. His fourth time in the role came in 2016 during the EU referendum – fittingly for a play about “tearing up the map, old people making a disastrous decision and letting the younger people sort it out”, he said.

In 2013, West had a small role in Coronation Street and in 2014 he made his first appearance on EastEnders as Stan Carter, a character he played for more than a year. His recent television credits included Gentleman Jack.