The acclaimed British actor Timothy West has died peacefully in his sleep at age 90, his children announced in a statement on the social media platform X. During his 60-year career, West dazzled on both the screen and the stage, repeatedly starring in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear and portraying Winston Churchill in three separate films. He began his entertainment career as an assistant stage manager at the Wimbledon Theatre, the BBC reported, before eventually joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 1960s. In the 1970s, he starred in BBC adaptations of Shakespeare’s Richard II and Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, and in the 1980s, he appeared in the comedy drama series Brass and the Agatha Christie series Miss Marple. He had a memorable turn in the 2000s on the soap operas Coronation Street and EastEnders. And from 2014 to 2019, he hosted the popular Channel 4 series GreatCanal Journeys with his wife of 61 years, Fawlty Towers star, Prunella Scales. “Tim was with friends and family at the end,” his children wrote. He is survived by Scales, a sister, three children, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “All of us will miss him terribly,” they said.
