ROBERT HARDY

(29 October 1925 - 3 August 2017)

The actor Robert Hardy, who has died aged 91, may well be remembered for two roles, although he played a wide variety of parts on stage, in films and on television. He seemed to have cornered the market on TV as Winston Churchill and latterly as Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter films. Early on in his career he worked in Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon and later gave a fine performance as Henry V in the BBC’s An Age of Kings series. He graced many a period drama series, including the title role in David Copperfield, Henry Grandcourt in Daniel Deronda, Dudley in Elizabeth R, Prince Albert in Edward the Seventh, Caesar in The Cleopatras, Arthur Broke in Middlemarch and Tite Barnacle in Little Dorrit. He was popular as Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small on TV but it was as Churchill that he made his greatest mark in The Wilderness Years, War and Remembrance and Churchill: 100 Days That Saved Britain. He also played the great man in the stage musical Winnie, created by Robin Hardy (no relation). Some of the films he made include The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, How I Won the War, 10 Rillington Place, Young Winston (as a headmaster), Gawain and the Green Knight, David Hare’s Paris by Night, Sense and Sensibility, An Ideal Husband and four Harry Potters. He was married first to Elizabeth Fox and then Sally Pearson. He has three children.

MICHAEL DARVELL