Peter Bowles

Peter Bowles (16 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an English actor whose career spanned stage, television, and film across more than six decades. Born in London, he grew up in Nottingham after his father, Herbert Reginald Bowles — who worked as a valet-companion, chauffeur, and later butler — was relocated to the Rolls-Royce Aero-engine factory in Hucknall during the Second World War. His mother, Sarah Jane Bowles (née Harrison), was Scottish and had previously worked as a nanny for the family of the Duke of Argyll before meeting her husband while both were employed by the Beaverbrook family. Bowles attended Nottingham High Pavement Grammar School, where the novelist Stanley Middleton taught him English, before winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he earned the Kendall Prize and later became an associate of the institution.

Following his training at RADA, Bowles joined the Old Vic Company in 1956, performing small parts in Shakespeare productions including Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Richard II, alongside Claire Bloom, Paul Rogers, and John Neville. The company subsequently toured North America, and in March 1956 Bowles was contracted for a 25-week tour of the United States and Canada beginning that September. The tour concluded with a sell-out season at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, where his credits included Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, King Richard II, and Macbeth.

After the Broadway engagement, Bowles made his first appearance at the Nottingham Playhouse on 2 December 1957 in Witness for the Prosecution. Further work at that theatre included the role of the Wolf in a pantomime of Little Red Riding Hood written by David Waller, the Constable of France in Henry V, and Sir Charles Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer alongside John Woodvine. He then joined the Bristol Old Vic Company, where he played character parts and participated in two Shakespeare productions taken to the Baalbeck Festival. That work led to an engagement with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in London in September 1960, where he appeared as Dr. Copperthwaite in The Happy Haven, directed by Bill Gaskell, and as Kirill in Platanov by Chekhov, directed by George Devine in a production starring Rex Harrison.

In 1961, Bowles appeared in J.B. at the Phoenix Theatre, directed by Laurier Lister, before being cast as Roger in Bonne Soupe at the Comedy Theatre and later Wyndham's Theatre, starring Coral Browne and directed by Eleanor Fazan. His subsequent stage work included Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends with Richard Briers at the Garrick Theatre in 1975, Tom Stoppard's Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land at the Arts Theatre in 1976, and Peter Nichols's Born in the Gardens, directed by Clifford Williams, which opened at the Bristol Old Vic before transferring to the Globe in 1980.

In 1986, Bowles took on the role of Archie Rice in John Osborne's The Entertainer at the Shaftesbury Theatre, becoming the first actor to play the part in London since Laurence Olivier in 1957. He starred opposite Michael Gambon in Alan Ayckbourn's Man of the Moment at the Globe Theatre in 1990, and in 1995 played the title role in Gangster No 1 at the Almeida Theatre, for which he held the film rights and later served as executive producer on the 2000 film adaptation starring Paul Bettany. Director Sir Peter Hall subsequently cast Bowles in a succession of leading West End roles, among them Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables opposite Patricia Hodge, George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara with Jemma Redgrave, and two productions opposite Judi Dench at the Theatre Royal Haymarket — George S. Kaufman's The Royal Family and Noël Coward's Hay Fever. In 1996, Bowles played Arnolphe in Molière's The School for Wives at the Piccadilly Theatre. Additional stage credits included Coward's Present Laughter, Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth, Frederick Knott's Wait Until Dark, Simon Gray's The Old Masters directed by Harold Pinter at the Comedy Theatre in 2004, Rattigan's In Praise of Love at the Apollo Theatre, Higgins in Shaw's Pygmalion, and Judge Brack in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler opposite Francesca Annis. Hall's final collaboration with Bowles was Sheridan's The Rivals in 2011 opposite Dame Penelope Keith at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Bowles's final stage role was Father Merrin in The Exorcist at the Phoenix Theatre, directed by Sean Mathias.

On television, Bowles was cautioned by casting directors upon leaving RADA that his appearance would prevent him from being cast as an Englishman, and his early screen career bore that out, consisting largely of villainous and foreign roles in series such as The Avengers, Danger Man, The Saint, Department S, The Persuaders, and The Prisoner, in which he played 'A' in the 1967 episode "A. B. and C." He appeared as Caractacus in the 1976 BBC adaptation of I, Claudius and played Balor in an episode of Space: 1999. In 1975 he played David Grant in the BBC series Survivors, a character who died in the first episode, and that same year took the role of Guthrie Featherstone QC MP in Rumpole of the Bailey, a part he continued to play across multiple series through 1992. His first television comedy role came in an episode of Rising Damp, after which he became widely associated with the genre. He played Richard DeVere, a nouveau riche supermarket owner of Czech origin, in To the Manor Born, a series that drew audiences of over 20 million viewers across all twenty-one episodes. Further comedy work included roles in Only When I Laugh, as Archie Glover, The Bounder, and Executive Stress. Following a BBC assertion that his comedy success precluded him from drama work, Bowles developed and sold to ITV a drama series called Lytton's Diary, in which he also starred.