Timothy West, who has died aged 90, wrote an autobiography in 2001 in which he quoted a remark of Richard Strauss: “I may not be a first-rank composer but I think I may be a first-rate composer of the second rank.” West argued that since most of the major roles he had played – including King Lear, Falstaff and Prospero – had been in touring or regional theatre, he probably belonged in the second rank. But he was being unduly modest. He had an outstanding career that lasted more than half a century, embraced theatre, film, TV and radio, and made him the kind of actor that directors always wanted to have in their company.
West had a particular gift for playing historical figures. He appeared on screen as Mikhail Gorbachev, Winston Churchill (twice), Edward VII, Lord Reith and the suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams. On stage he played Josef Stalin, the conductor Thomas Beecham and the literary giant Samuel Johnson. In fact, he played the latter twice for the Prospect Theatre Company and, with his strong jaw and solid figure, he seemed the very embodiment of Dr Johnson. He also exuded an 18th-century quality known as “bottom”, which the OED defines as “physical resources, staying power, substance, stability”. Those were the very attributes that made West such a fine actor.
West’s involvement with Prospect was long and fruitful and included a memorable season during which he played Bolingbroke and Mortimer to Ian McKellen’s Richard II and Edward II. West visibly differentiated between his two roles, playing Bolingbroke as a Machiavellian politician and Mortimer as a bloodthirsty warlord, providing a perfect foil to McKellen. He went on to play numerous roles for Prospect, including a gay hairdresser opposite Derek Jacobi in Staircase and, when Prospect morphed into the Old Vic Company in the late 70s, West unexpectedly found himself at its helm. This led to an unfortunate incident in 1980 when he appeared to disown an ill-fated production of Macbeth starring Peter O’Toole. His intention, he later explained, was simply to make clear that Macbeth was an autonomous production, but the resulting brouhaha cured him of any further desire to run a company.
West’s career as an actor continued unabated. He had a long and rich association with television that often involved his playing hard-headed, flint-hearted capitalists: the very opposite of West himself. In 1977, he played Josiah Bounderby, a ruthless manufacturer who marries a woman 30 years younger, in an adaptation of Dickens’s Hard Times. Between 1983 and 1990 he starred in 32 episodes of the Granada series Brass, in which he played an even more ruthless, domineering mill-owner: he later described it as one of the most enjoyable things he had done in his life. Later he was the pompous baronet Sir Leicester Deadlock in Bleak House and, on a gentler note, played the amiably bewildered Private Godfrey in three lost episodes of Dad’s Army, remade in 2019.
But, although television and occasional films enabled West to earn a comfortable living, he knew that the ultimate challenges lay in the theatre. He was Solness in Ibsen’s The Master Builder in 1989, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in 1990, and James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night in 1991 – with his wife, Prunella Scales, as Mary Tyrone. West always relished playing opposite members of his own family. In 1996, he was Falstaff in the two parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV with his son, Samuel, playing Prince Hal. That father-son pairing was repeated to even greater effect when West père et fils twice appeared together in Caryl Churchill’s A Number. Since the whole play depends on a father’s complex relationship with his physically identical sons, the result was unbearably moving.
A true pro, West went on working in all media, appearing in TV’s two biggest soaps, Coronation Street and EastEnders. He and his wife also won a whole new audience when they appeared together in a long-running Channel 4 series, Great Canal Journeys, which capitalised on their love of Britain’s inland waterways.
West’s real achievement was that he embodied much that was best in British theatre: total dependability, absolute devotion to the craft and a tireless, lifelong commitment to touring and the regions.
