Departures of note

Phyllida Law was a Scottish actress whose prolific career spanned more than eight decades across stage, television and film. Born in Glasgow in 1932, she trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, initially intending to become a stage designer before discovering her calling as an actor. She appeared in numerous Bristol Old Vic productions in the 1950s, where she met fellow actor Eric Thompson, whom she married in 1957.

Law built a distinguished stage career, appearing in the original 1967 London production of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, alongside Alec Guinness in A Voyage Round My Father and Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus, and in the first London run of the musical La Cage aux Folles. She also joined the National Theatre in the late 1970s. On television she was a familiar presence from the late 1950s onward in shows including Dr Finlay's Casebook, Dixon of Dock Green, Foyle's War, Doc Martin and Agatha Christie's Poirot, and had a recurring role in the Stephen Fry comedy Kingdom.

From the late 1980s Law gained wider film prominence, appearing alongside her daughter Emma in Peter's Friends, Much Ado About Nothing and Emma, and playing mother and daughter with Emma in Alan Rickman's acclaimed directorial debut The Winter Guest. Her final screen role came in the 2020 romance Then Came You. She was appointed an OBE in 2014 for services to drama and charitable work, and also published two memoirs.