Although Timothy West, who has died aged 90, never played the greatest stage roles at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, he took on many of them – Falstaff (twice), King Lear (four times), Uncle Vanya, Willy Loman, Ibsen’s Solness – in regional reps and on tour, in a career that spanned seven decades and established him as one of the most recognisable, popular and substantial actors of his day.
On television he was a notable interpreter of leading political and institutional figures, portraying Horatio Bottomley, Edward VII, Mikhail Gorbachev, Winston Churchill and Thomas Beecham, and he completed a double in soap history in 2013 by appearing in Coronation Street and EastEnders within one year: as Eric Babbage, a short-lived fiance to Sue Johnston’s Gloria in the first, and as Stan Carter, a former Billingsgate fishmonger drawn into Albert Square life by his publican son in the second.
