Timothy West, who has died aged 90, wrote an autobiography in 2001 through which he quoted a comment of Richard Strauss: “I might not be a first-rank composer however I believe I could also be a first-rate composer of the second rank.” West argued that since many of the main roles he had performed – together with King Lear, Falstaff and Prospero – had been in touring or regional theatre, he in all probability belonged within the second rank. However he was being unduly modest. He had an excellent profession that lasted greater than half a century, embraced theatre, movie, TV and radio, and made him the sort of actor that administrators at all times wished to have of their firm.
West had a specific reward for enjoying historic figures. He appeared on display screen as Mikhail Gorbachev, Winston Churchill (twice), Edward VII, Lord Reith and the suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams. On stage he performed Josef Stalin, the conductor Thomas Beecham and the literary large Samuel Johnson. In reality, he performed the latter twice for the Prospect Theatre Firm and, together with his sturdy jaw and strong determine, he appeared the very embodiment of Dr Johnson. He additionally exuded an 18th-century high quality referred to as “backside”, which the OED defines as “bodily assets, endurance, substance, stability”. These have been the very attributes that made West such a nice actor.
West’s involvement with Prospect was lengthy and fruitful and included a memorable season throughout which he performed Bolingbroke and Mortimer to Ian McKellen’s Richard II and Edward II. West visibly differentiated between his two roles, taking part in Bolingbroke as a Machiavellian politician and Mortimer as a bloodthirsty warlord, offering an ideal foil to McKellen. He went on to play quite a few roles for Prospect, together with a homosexual hairdresser reverse Derek Jacobi in Staircase and, when Prospect morphed into the Previous Vic Firm within the late 70s, West unexpectedly discovered himself at its helm. This led to an unlucky incident in 1980 when he appeared to disown an ill-fated manufacturing of Macbeth starring Peter O’Toole. His intention, he later defined, was merely to clarify that Macbeth was an autonomous manufacturing, however the ensuing brouhaha cured him of any additional want to run an organization.
West’s profession as an actor continued unabated. He had an extended and wealthy affiliation with tv that always concerned his taking part in hard-headed, flint-hearted capitalists: the very reverse of West himself. In 1977, he performed Josiah Bounderby, a ruthless producer who marries a girl 30 years youthful, in an adaptation of Dickens’s Laborious Occasions. Between 1983 and 1990 he starred in 32 episodes of the Granada collection Brass, through which he performed an much more ruthless, domineering mill-owner: he later described it as one of the vital pleasing issues he had executed in his life. Later he was the pompous baronet Sir Leicester Impasse in Bleak Home and, on a gentler notice, performed the amiably bewildered Non-public Godfrey in three misplaced episodes of Dad’s Military, remade in 2019.
However, though tv and occasional movies enabled West to earn a snug dwelling, he knew that the final word challenges lay within the theatre. He was Solness in Ibsen’s The Grasp Builder in 1989, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in 1990, and James Tyrone in Lengthy Day’s Journey Into Night time in 1991 – together with his spouse, Prunella Scales, as Mary Tyrone. West at all times relished taking part in reverse members of his circle of relatives. In 1996, he was Falstaff within the two components of Shakespeare’s Henry IV together with his son, Samuel, taking part in Prince Hal. That father-son pairing was repeated to even larger impact when West père et fils twice appeared collectively in Caryl Churchill’s A Quantity. Because the complete play will depend on a father’s advanced relationship together with his bodily similar sons, the outcome was unbearably transferring.
A real professional, West went on working in all media, showing in TV’s two greatest soaps, Coronation Road and EastEnders. He and his spouse additionally gained a complete new viewers once they appeared collectively in a long-running Channel 4 collection, Nice Canal Journeys, which capitalised on their love of Britain’s inland waterways.
West’s actual achievement was that he embodied a lot that was finest in British theatre: whole dependability, absolute devotion to the craft and a tireless, lifelong dedication to touring and the areas.
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