The actor Hildegard Neil, who has died aged 84, brought authority to the many roles she took in British theatre and film for more than half a century. She was also prolific on television, where she will be remembered by many viewers for a matriarchal role in a popular children’s adventure series.
As Emma Bulman in Boy Dominic (1974), she is left destitute with her son Dominic (played by Murray Dale) after her seafaring husband, Charles (Richard Todd), goes missing, presumed dead, when his ship runs aground off the coast of Africa. In the 13-episode series she sells their comfortable home in Greenwich, south-east London, and moves to Yorkshire, where she runs a boarding house with a drunken sailor, William Woodcock (Brian Blessed), who had served under her husband at the Battle of Trafalgar.
