Dog walker row death: Man on bail
her first movie role, in Fame Is The Spur.
A year later, she married businessman Bill Sankey, but it wasn’t a happy union and they divorced. In fact, Honor’s father saw it wouldn’t work and tried to warn her.
“On the way to the ceremony her father said, ‘It’s not too late to change your mind,’” says Richard.
Later, aged 37, she married actor Maurice Kaufmann. The pair struggled to have children and adopted a boy and a girl, Barnaby and Lottie.
Not having their own children “had been a disappointment”, says Richard.
But adopting changed Honor’s world. “She said it just made her life richer,” he says.
Yet family couldn’t save the marriage, and they divorced in 1975, although remained friends.
Much later, she said: “I love men – but I don’t ever want to live with one again. I like having them around. But I like to do what I like to do, when I like to do it.”
Performing meant everything. The Avengers had catapulted her into the stratosphere – although it wasn’t easy being a woman in a man’s movie world.
Richard describes the set-up Honor
HONOR BLACKMAN ON SENSE OF INDEPENDENCE encountered when she went for judo lessons. “I remember her telling me there was nowhere for her to change,” he says.
“The only place was a terrible, grungy corner with a curtain in which there was a lot of men’s jockstraps!”
The on-screen chemistry was instant with co-star Macnee, and they fast became friends.
“She always thought Patrick was such a gentleman,” says Richard.
In 1964, when she played Pussy Galore opposite Sean Connery, the chemistry sizzled too. “There was no doubt she thought Sean was sexy!” says Richard.
But if she had any, she remained tightlipped about love affairs. Gossip wasn’t really Honor’s thing. Instead, politics got her going. A staunch Republican, and a
Liberal Democrat furiously anti-Brexit, even in their final meeting, just before Christmas, Richard says she was ranting about our exit from Europe.
“She could be pretty sharp!” he laughs. Although it is her glamorous image that will live on, Honor was always more concerned with what she was thinking.
Nevertheless, her beauty, although “fading like a beautiful flower”, describes Richard, softly, was present until the last.
“Her voice was always there, even at the end, and her smile, and her rather wonderful eyes,” he says.
“But a lot of it is to do with an inner attitude. One of the things that made her so beautiful was her sense of herself.”
DIED Ralph Baxter, 72
A DOG walker arrested on suspicion of murdering a retired civil servant decorated by the Queen has been released on bail.
Ralph Baxter, 72, died after getting in a row with a man whose husky had attacked his shih tzu.
A 27-year-old local man was arrested on suspicion of Wednesday’s murder in Roade, Northants, but has since been freed on bail.
Police said a postmortem on Ralph came back as “unascertained”.
He was awarded an MBE in 2007 for public service after working for the Department of Work and Pensions for over 40 years.
Ralph was a former Labour trade union leader and rugby player.
Shocked neighbour Elizabeth Tilley called him a “lovely gentleman”.
I love men – but I don’t ever want to live with one again