Timothy West – a life in pictures

The actor Timothy West has died at the age of 90. We look back at his greatest stage and screen roles, from the BBC to the Royal Shakespeare Company
• Timothy West, star of stage, screen and television, dies aged 90
• Michael Billington on Timothy West: ‘A modest maestro’

As King Edward, in the 1975 TV series Edward the Seventh, with Helen Ryan as Queen Alexandra

Photograph: ITV/Shutterstock

As Sir Gilbert Boscoe in The Governor’s Lady by David Mercer, Royal Shakespeare Company, at the Aldwych theatre, London, in February 1965

Photograph: John Silverside/ANL/Shutterstock

Playing Josiah Bounderby, with Patrick Allen as Gradgrind, in the 1977 television adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times

Photograph: ITV/Rex Features

As Winston Churchill in Churchill and the Generals, 1979, for which he won the John Logie Baird performance award in 1980

Photograph: Evening Gazette/Allstar

From left: Timothy West, Julian Glover, Isla Blair and Derek Jacobi from the Prospect Theatre Company at the Seymour Centre, Sydney, in 1979. The company became the Old Vic Theatre Company

Photograph: Fairfax Media/Getty Images

West as serial killer Dr Bodkin Adams in The Good Doctor Bodkin Adams, BBC, 1985

Photograph: ANL/Shutterstock

As Professor Furie in A Very Peculiar Practice, 1986, a BBC series starring Peter Davison

Photograph: Courtesy of Network DVD

As Brigadier General Andrew Thomson in The Monocled Mutineer, a TV miniseries, 1986

Photograph: Evening Gazette/Allstar

As Captain De Wet in Richard Attenborough’s film Cry Freedom. Starring Denzel Washington as Steve Biko, 1987

Photograph: Universal Pictures/Allstar

As Mikhail Gorbachev in the TV programme Breakthrough at Reykjavik, with Robert Beatty as Ronald Reagan, 1987

Photograph: Kevin Holt/ANL/Shutterstock

In the third series of Brass, 1990, as Bradley Hardacre

Photograph: ITV/Rex Features

Playing Falstaff in Henry IV Part II by William Shakespeare at the Old Vic theatre, London, 1997

Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

As Lear in King Lear, with Rachel Pickup as Cordelia, at the Old Vic theatre, 2003

Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

As Sir Leicester Dedlock in the TV series Bleak House, 2005

Photograph: Mike Hogan/BBC/Ronald Grant

As Hilary in The Old Country, with Jean Marsh (Bron) at Trafalgar Studios, London, 2006

Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

With his son, Samuel West, in A Number by Caryl Churchill at the Studio theatre, the Crucible, Sheffield, 2006

Photograph: Alastair Muir/Rex/Shutterstock

In Coronation Street, 2013. Gloria Price (Sue Johnston) returns from the Algarve unannounced with Eric played by Timothy West, her new fiance, in tow. Also pictured Stella Price (Michelle Collins)

Photograph: ITV/Shutterstock

As Stan Carter in EastEnders, 2014

Photograph: Kieron McCarron/BBC

With his wife Prunella Scales in Great Canal Journeys: Venice, 2016

Photograph: Channel 4 Television

West as Private Godfrey in Dad’s Army: The Lost Episodes – The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Walker, 2019

Photograph: Ollie Upton/UKTV

In the BBC’s series Gentleman Jack as Jeremy Lister, 2019

Photograph: Matt Squire/BBC/Lookout Point/HBO

Prunella Scales and Timothy West at the Oldie of the Year awards in 2016

Photograph: Neil Spence/Alamy