Robert Hardy
Many-faceted actor who secured his place in the nation’s affections as country vet Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small
ROBERT HARDY, the actor, who has died aged 91, could claim a fine record of television performances spanning more than 40 years, ranging from several portrayals of Winston Churchill to that of the peppery vet Siegfried Farnon in the popular 1980s series All Creatures Great and Small.
Hardy’s acting was manyfaceted, energetic, and – like the English climate – subject to sunshine, small storms and changeable moods. It was said that in his wide range of character roles, he was to British television between 1960 and 1980 what Alec Guinness was to British cinema in the 1940s.
He could be darkly overcast and this attribute, together with a certain physical likeness, suited him for the Churchill role which, in various television, stage and film productions, he filled numerous times. Of these, perhaps the most memorable was his portrayal of the great man in Churchill – The Wilderness Years (1981).
Though he showed early talent at the Old Vic in the 1950s, playing roles ranging from Laertes in Hamlet to Ariel in The Tempest, he failed to progress to the National Theatre owing, he said, to a disagreement with Peter Hall. Hardy apparently overheard Hall say he regarded him as one of the pillars of “the middle of the company”, a remark that upset him profoundly.
Hardy became prominent in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company at Stratford-upon-avon, the Bristol Old Vic and Prospect Productions, taking leading parts including Oberon and Edmund in King Lear at Stratford, Sir Henry Wildair in The Constant Couple (New, 1967) and Bernard Shaw in Dear Liar (Mermaid, 1982).
While maintaining a firm foothold in the theatre, Hardy also turned to television, starring as Henry V in the Shakespearean series An Age of Kings (1960), Leicester in Elizabeth R (1970), and Prince Albert in Edward VII (1975). In the same year, as Mussolini in Caesar and Claretta, co-starring with Helen Mirren, he impressed the Daily Telegraph critic with a virtuosic performance, “a portrayal uncanny in its physical resemblance, memorable for its restraint as well as its power”.
He also appeared as Grancourt in the BBC serialisation of Daniel
Deronda (1970) and as Malcolm Campbell in Speed King (1974).
But it was as the country vet Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small (1978-1990) that Hardy secured his lasting place in the nation’s affections. At Skeldale House in the fictional North Riding town of Darrowby (Askrigg in reality), the flamboyant Farnon and his easy-going brother Tristan (Peter Davison) built up a large rural practice, tending to the needs of farm animals and pets amid the Yorkshire dales in the late 1930s.
Hardy typified a versatile, sensitive, sometimes tumultuous man of action among the roughhewn farmers and their assorted animals. Based on the popular books by James Herriot, and rich in its nostalgic evocation of a vanished age amid some of England’s most beautiful countryside, the series became one of the BBC’S biggest successes.
He also acted in films and was the author of numerous television documentaries, in some of which he appeared himself. One of his hobbies was archery and in 1976 he published Longbow, a history of one of England’s oldest weapons of war. He claimed to be a quarter Welsh.
Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy was born in Cheltenham on October 29 1925, the son of Major Henry Harrison Hardy CBE, headmaster of Cheltenham College and later of Shrewsbury School. Robert followed his father to Rugby, and then to Oxford, where he read English Literature at Magdalen College, gaining enough acting experience to join the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, then touring in Australia, at the age of 24. His first London appearance was in 1952 as Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing at the Phoenix.
After two years with the Old Vic Company Hardy made his Broadway debut in 1956 as Martin in Someone Waiting. In London he was Lt Keith in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial at the Hippodrome and Byron in Camino Real at the Phoenix. He rejoined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company under Tyrone Guthrie for the 1959 season, appearing as the King of France opposite Edith Evans in All’s Well That Ends Well, the tribune Sicinius Velutus in Olivier’s Coriolanus and Edmund in King Lear with Charles Laughton.
At the Comedy Theatre in 1960 he played Rosmer in Ibsen’s Rosmersholm and, with the Bristol Old Vic in 1961, the Count in Anouilh’s The Rehearsal. In 1963 he was Lynch-gibbon in A Severed Head at the Criterion, before playing Henry V and Hamlet at the Ravinia Festival in Illinois.
During the 1960s his stage appearances dwindled as television increasingly claimed him and in 1966 he appeared as Alec Stewart in The Troubleshooters, a series set in the oil industry; it became one of the decade’s most popular television dramas.
In his mid-fifties, he was cast as Churchill in The Wilderness Years, covering the wartime Prime Minister’s life from 1929 to 1940. In 1986 he starred in Churchill in the USA and two years later was Churchill again in ITV’S The Woman He Loved, about Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson.
He wrote and starred in the BBC One documentary Gordon of Khartoum in 1982, giving what was described as a “breakneck” performance, and wrote other documentary films, including Horses in Our Blood, a series about British native breeds of horses and ponies which he also narrated and presented. In 1983 he was cast as Julius Caesar in the BBC Two series The Cleopatras, and in ITV’S sixpart serial Hot Metal (1987) played two characters, one a Fleet Street newspaper tycoon and the other a hardbitten editor.
His work in feature films included in 1984 The Shooting Party, a tale of class conflict and intrigues, and in 1985 Jenny’s War.
Hardy continued to be cast as Churchill, and in 1985 took the role in the son et lumière pageant Heart of the Nation on Horse Guards Parade. In 1988 he made another Churchillian appearance in the American-made television series War and Remembrance, and the same year took the title role in the ill-fated stage musical Winnie at the Victoria Palace, which closed after a short run with losses of £1.5million. In 1989 he played Churchill again in BBC television’s Bomber Harris.
Hardy’s more recent big screen roles included that of Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, in four Harry Potter films between 2002 and 2007.
He was appointed CBE in 1981, was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and held three honorary doctorates.
Hardy lived in a Tudor farmhouse in Oxfordshire and as well as archery, numbered horsemanship and bowyery among his recreations.
He was a member of the Battlefields Trust, and its patron since 2010, and served on the Battlefields Panel of English Heritage. As well as Longbow (1976) he published a second book on his favourite weapon, The Great War-bow (2004), was a trustee of the Royal Armouries from 1984 until 1995 and, in 1988-90, master of the court of the Worshipful Company of Bowyers.
His first marriage, in 1952, to Elizabeth Fox was dissolved and he married, in 1961, Sally Pearson, the daughter of the actress Dame Gladys Cooper. This marriage ended in 1986. He is survived by a son of the first marriage and two daughters of the second.
Robert Hardy, born October 29 1925, died August 3 2017