The actor Timothy West, whose career ranged from Shakespeare, Ibsen and Pinter on stage to TV 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: “After a long and extraordinary life on and off the stage, our darling father, Timothy West, died peacefully in his sleep yesterday evening. He was 90 years old.
“Tim was with friends and family at the end. He leaves his wife, Prunella Scales, to whom he was married for 61 years, a sister, a daughter, two sons, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. All of us will miss him terribly.
“We would like to thank the incredible NHS staff at St George’s hospital, Tooting, and at Avery Wandsworth for their loving care during his last days.”
Timothy West as Falstaff in Henry IV Part II at the Old Vic theatre, London, in 1997. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Hugely popular, with a commanding stage presence but unassuming personal manner, West toured the UK’s regional theatres with the same adventurous spirit with which he travelled its waterways.
“I feel more useful when I’m on the road, touring this country and others, playing in different theatres, 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 mad, but I love it.”
There were many tributes paid to West after news of his death. The writer and broadcaster Gyles Brandreth posted on Instagram: “A marvellous man – a marvellous actor, husband, father, friend. On stage, on screen, on a canal boat, on the end of a pier (he loved a seaside pier!), in the garden with a glass of wine, he was just the best. The great Timothy West has died at 90: what a worthwhile, well-filled life.”
West played leading roles 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 the designer William Morris and conductor Thomas Beecham, as well as political figures including Mikhail Gorbachev, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. West’s films included The Day of the Jackal (1973) and Cry Freedom (1987).
A regular presence on television since the 1960s, he played the eponymous king in Edward the Seventh in 1975, was the 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’s novels Hard Times, Oliver Twist and Bleak House. Hard Times, broadcast in 1977, was parodied in the 1983 TV series Brass, where West played the self-made northern businessman Bradley Hardacre. He was made a CBE in 1984.
Perhaps his greatest TV success came with Great Canal Journeys, a funny and moving series that was steered by his family’s passion for narrowboats. Starring West and Scales, the programme was notable for exploring how the pair navigated Scales’s experiences of dementia. “She can’t remember things very well, but you don’t have to remember things on the canal,” he said. “You can just enjoy things as they happen – so it’s perfect for her.”
Timothy West in King Lear at the Old Vic, London, in 2003. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Paying tribute to West on Times Radio, the broadcaster and Alzheimer’s campaigner Angela Rippon said his death was “a huge loss to everybody”.
“I think between them, Timothy and Pru did an amazing, amazing job of convincing people that dementia was not something that you should be always afraid of, but something that you could embrace and live with and live with well.”
West had a daughter, Juliet, with his first wife, Jacqueline Boyer. He and Scales had two sons, Samuel and Joseph. Samuel starred alongside his father on several occasions on stage and screen.
Born in Bradford in 1934 to Lockwood West and Olive Carleton-Crowe, both actors, West had an itinerant early childhood.
During the second world war the family settled in Bristol, where West’s father joined the war reserve police, and West’s stage debut was opposite his parents in the constabulary’s 1943 panto. He often played truant and was expelled from school, but regularly attended performances at the Little theatre in Bristol.
Jean Marsh and Timothy West in The Old Country at Trafalgar Studios, London, in 2006. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
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 an assistant stage manager at Wimbledon theatre in London; he was soon taking to the stage in gradually bigger roles.
In the 1960s, he appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company and, for Prospect theatre company, played Samuel Johnson (opposite Julian Glover as James Boswell). He also 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 – fitting 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 first appeared on EastEnders as Stan Carter, a character he played for more than a year. His recent TV credits included Gentleman Jack.
This article was amended on 13 November 2024. In an earlier version, Angela Rippon’s comments were mistakenly attributed to Joanna Lumley.