I’ve been looking at British actor Timothy West (1934-2024) a lot lately as I do my recaps of his star turn in Edward the King (1975). So of course, I immediately need to know, what else has he been in?? A LOT, I can tell you! West started out in theater in the 1950s, performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company for three seasons in the 1960s, and then branched out to TV and film. Edward the King was in fact his breakout role, screen-wise, but he had a long and storied career following. He was also married to actress Prunella Scales, and is the father of actor Samuel West, who looks SO MUCH like his father!
There are NUMEROUS productions for which I can’t find pics:
- Charles Hayter in Persuasion (1960-61)
- Hans Richter in The Siegfried Idyll (1969)
- Henry Bolingbroke in The Tragedy of King Richard II (1970)
- Convent Chaplain in Undercovers Hero (1974)
- William Morris in News from Nowhere (1978)
- Mr. Morris in Tender Is the Night (1985)
- Alexander ‘Helphand’ Parvus in Lenin: The Train (1988)
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Hiroshima (1995)
- Mr. Baker in Rebecca (1997)
- Gloucester in Performance: “King Lear” (1998)
- John Dickens in Dickens (2002)
- Martin Luther in Martin Luther (2002)
- Thomas Creevey in Looking for Victoria (2003)
- Henry Mayhew – Journalist in Peter Ackroyd’s London (2004)
- Reverend Eager in A Room with a View (2007)
- Lord Mansfield in The British (2012-14)
Here’s the rest of his appearances in historical films and TV series!
Young Mortimer in Edward II (1970)
A TV movie adaptation of the Shakespeare play.
Dr. Samuel Johnson in Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1971)
A stagey-looking TV biopic about the 18th-century English poet, playwright, author, and lexographer.
Dr. Botkin in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
Botkin was the court physician to the last tsar of Russia and family, who was murdered along with the family in 1917.
Horatio Bottomley in The Edwardians (1972-73)
A TV anthology in which each episode focused on a different celebrated person of the Edwardian era. Bottomley was, per Wikipedia, an “English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament.”
Prof. Gebhardt in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)
A biopic about Hitler’s last days. Gebhardt was a physician and the main coordinator of the Nazis’ medical atrocities.
Prince of Wales/King Edward the Seventh/Bertie in Edward the King (1975)
West’s breakout role in terms of the silver screen, as Bertie, Prince of Wales and later King Edward VII.
Brack in Hedda (1975)
A feature film adaptation of Ibsen’s 1891 play, Hedda Gabler.
Mr. Tow-Wouse in Joseph Andrews (1977)
I don’t remember West in this technicolor adaptation of an 18th-century novel, but that’s probably because he was so rough and tumble!
Josiah Bounderby in Hard Times (1977)
A TV miniseries adaptation of the Dickens novel.
Porton in The Thirty Nine Steps (1978)
A British spy thriller set during World War I.
Kenward in Agatha (1979)
A feature film focused on the famously mysterious 11-day disappearance of author Agatha Christine.
Cardinal Wolsey in The BBC Television Shakespeare: “Henry VIII” (1979)
A TV adaptation of the Shakespeare play.
Porfiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment (1979)
A TV miniseries of the Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel.
Winston Churchill in Churchill and the Generals (1979)
West seems to have specialized in playing the British prime minister, most famous for seeing the UK through World War II. This is his first try!
Emperor Vespasian in Masada (1981)
A TV miniseries about the true-life story of the nine hundred Jewish zealots who held out against a five thousand man Roman legion on a mountaintop fortress.
Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist (1982)
A TV adaptation of the Dickens novel.
Winston Churchill in The Last Bastion (1984)
Round two as Churchill!
Rex Fortescue in Miss Marple: “A Pocketful of Rye” (1985)
Obligatory “all British actors are legally required to show up in at least one Agatha Christie adaptation” appearance!
William Russell in Florence Nightingale (1985)
A TV biopic about the legendary nurse who pioneered new medical techniques during the Crimean War (1853-56).
Dr. John Bodkin Adams in The Good Doctor Bodkin Adams (1986)
An Irish doctor in the 1950s is accused of murdering his patients.
Thomson in Sunday Premiere: “The Monocled Mutineer: Before the Shambles” & “The Monocled Mutineer: When the Hurly-Burly’s Done” (1986)
A miniseries about a soldier responsible for a World War I mutiny.
Councillor Albert Parker in When We Are Married (1987)
An adaptation of a play about three couples celebrating their anniversaries, set around 1900.
Charles Clutterbuck in Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun (1988)
A TV biopic about a famous Anglo-Kenyan female aviator.
William Faraday in Campion (1989-90)
A TV adaptation of a series of mystery novels, originally published beginning in 1929.
Bradley Hardacre/Winston Churchill in Brass (1983-90)
An apparently legendary British TV series that was a spoof of working-class period dramas.
Frank Sheringham in Smokescreen (1994)
Per IMDB: “Its the summer of 1907, and cinema is in its infancy. In a northern industrial town two very different movie moguls are battling for the hearts, minds and purses of the local population.”
Tufty McDuff in Goodnight Sweetheart (1993-2016)
“British sitcom in which an unhappily married man discovers he can time travel back to 1940s war-torn London where he masquerades as an MI5 agent and part-time songwriter whilst courting the local barmaid” (IMDB).
Colonel Kindersley in Bramwell (1995-98)
A TV series about a late 19th-century fictional female doctor.
King Francis in Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998)
Daw, he played papa-in-law in this historical take on the Cinderella story!
Cauchon in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
One of many films recounting the events around Joan of Arc.
Sir Christopher Ellis in Station Jim (2001)
A dog raises money for orphans by performing tricks at an English railway station.
Hugh Burrell in Villa des roses (2002)
An adaptation of a novel, in which a dilapidated Paris mansion serves as a hotel for “seedy” people.
Bunny Warren in Colditz (2005)
A fictionalized take on the World War II prison camp and famous escape.
Sir Leicester Dedlock in Bleak House (2005)
A TV miniseries adaptation of the Dickens novel.
Reverend Cottrell in Poirot: “Hallowe’en Party” (2011)
Yay, second obligatory Agatha Christie adaptation appearance!
Lord Pirrie in Titanic (2012)
A TV miniseries about the sinking of the famous ship in 1912.
Pte. Charles Godfrey in Dad’s Army: The Lost Episodes (2019)
Remakes of three lost episodes of the famous TV series about older men on the British World War II homefront.
Jeremy Lister in Gentleman Jack (2019-22)
West played Anne Lister’s father in this beloved series!
What’s YOUR favorite of Timothy West’s many historical roles?
Way too many to choose from. Damn, what a career!
All hail the character actors who keep themselves so busy and their audiences so very entertained!
Honestly, I don’t know where to start! I also had the pleasure of seeing him on stage as King Lear and as Menenius in “Coriolanus”, the last RSC production in the old Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
I met him once – fabulously kind and generous; he came to the school I taught at to spend an hour talking to teenagers.
Brassis deservedly legendary. Wonderful send-up of DH Lawrence and all those “grim up North” writers.
He also ran the Old Vic for a while. A proper actor of the old school. Really hard to pick just one performance, though he was brilliant (and chilling) in Bleak House.