ROSEMARY LEACH

(18 December 1935 - 21 October 2017)

Actress Rosemary Leach, who has died aged 81 after a short illness, worked extensively on stage and radio, both of which she preferred to television and films, although she appeared in over a hundred television programmes and a number of films as well. She studied at Rada and worked in repertory from 1955 in Amersham, Coventry, Liverpool, Birmingham and The Old Vic. Among her stage successes were plays by Hugh Leonard, Terence Rattigan, Emlyn Williams, William Douglas-Home and Shakespeare. She won a best actress Olivier award for Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road, a favourite part (along with Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls). However, television took up most of Leach’s career and she was a familiar face in many a popular TV sitcom. She was in the TV drama series The Power Game with Patrick Wymark, Zola’s Germinal, Sartre’s The Roads to Freedom, as the Mother in Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie, in Disraeli (as Queen Victoria), The Charmer, with Nigel Havers, etc. She will be especially remembered for The Jewel in the Crown, playing Aunt Fenny. Rosemary Leach’s first film was That’ll Be the Day (1973), playing David Essex’s mother, and in the same year she appeared in Ghost in the Noonday Sun with Peter Sellers. A Question of Faith was about the death of Tolstoy, while Turtle Diary had Glenda Jackson freeing the sea creatures. Rosemary Leach was delightful as Mrs Honeychurch in James Ivory’s A Room With a View and she also appeared in The Children, with Ben Kingsley, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Hawk, Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?, Breathtaking, The Baroness and the Pig, Mission London and The Great Ghost Rescue. Her last film was May I Kill U? with Kevin Bishop in 2012. Over the years she had a recurring part in The Archers on BBC Radio 4. Rosemary Leach was married to the actor Colin Starkey, who survives her.

MICHAEL DARVELL