Peter Bowles – 16.11.36 – 17.3.22

English actor Peter Bowles has died.

Bounder, criminal, villain. Dandy, duke or diplomat. Peter Bowles, who has died aged 85 of cancer, could be all of these incarnations and often two or three of them at once.

Always distinguished and highly regarded, Bowles himself ruefully admitted that he wasn’t a “star” until, aged 43, he played Richard DeVere, the former costermonger turned supermarket tycoon, in the BBC’s hit comedy series To the Manor Born (1979-81), written by Peter Spence, in which he contested the affections, and the superior social status, of Penelope Keith’s not so merry widow Audrey fforbes-Hamilton.

The sure-fire premise of a classic class-conscious comedy was that Audrey, beset with debts and death duties, was obliged to downsize and set up home in the lodge on her own estate, now in the ownership of a monstrous arriviste. The ripples of resentment, compromise and green shoots of affection were the fuel of two brilliant comic performances; while Keith had already achieved national stardom in The Good Life – Bowles had turned down the role taken in that series by Paul Eddington – this was his moment, and he seized it with relish. . . 

The phenomenon of a posh villain or cultured cad was nothing new. But Bowles could suggest complications beyond the superficially suave. He often paraded his charm as a veil for true menace or nastiness, as well as spivvery, and there was always a hint of phoniness around the smooth-talking self-assurance. Even off-stage or off-set he was always impeccably dressed in pronounced pin-stripes and high, starched collars.

This was a result of his background. Both his parents were in domestic service, but only, as they used to say, to the quality. An only child, Bowles was born in Upper Boddington, Northamptonshire, 12 miles from Banbury, to Sarah Jane (nee Harrison) and Herbert Bowles. Herbert was valet to Drogo Montagu, son of the Earl of Sandwich, while Sarah was nanny to Lady Jeanne Campbell, Lord Beaverbrook’s granddaughter, whose mother married the Duke of Argyll.

In 1940, the Bowleses moved to a two-up, two-down (with outside lavatory) in Nottingham, where Herbert now worked for Rolls-Royce and Peter was educated at High Pavement grammar school, alma mater too of the comedian John Bird. Encouraged by his own aptitude in school plays, and the example of two former pupils, Philip Voss and John Turner, who had both entered the acting profession with success, Bowles secured a scholarship to Rada in London. . .