Felicity Kendal: The Good Lithe

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Talent…

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… These are the lovely ladies and gorgeous girls of eras gone by whose beauty, ability, electricity and all-round x-appeal deserve celebration and – ahem – salivation here at George’s Journal…

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It’s Easter, which means it’s spring (sort of), so what better subject for our second Talent offering than the garden goddess who was a byword for Surbiton-based suburban self-sufficiency from the ’70s and is now a formidable grande dame of the West End theatre? Yes, that’s right, it’s the delightful, game and unforgettable Mrs Barbara Good, none other than Felicity Kendal…

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Profile

Name: Felicity Ann Kendal, CBE

Nationality: English

Profession: Actress

Born: 25 September 1946 in Olton, Solihull, Warwickshire (now West Midlands), England

Height: 5ft

Known for: as the lovely self-sufficient Barbara in the iconic sitcom The Good Life (1975-78), her BBC follow-up dramedy Solo (1981-82), the Channel 4 literary adaptation The Camomile Lawn (1992) and as one half of ITV’s green-fingered crime-fighting duo Rosemary & Thyme ~ TV (2003-06). Over the decades she’s amassed a highly impressive body of worj, often in the West End, including the Tom Stoppard plays The Real Thing (1982), Hapgood (1988), Arcadia (1993) and Indian Ink (1995), and, most recently, The Vortex (2008), The Last Cigarette (2009) and Mrs Warren’s Profession (2010).

Strange but true: Her father led a traveling repertory company in India, in which she often appeared while growing up –  performing in rural villages and before royalty; her older actress sister Jennifer appeared alongside legendary actor Shashi Kapoor in the 1965 Merchant/ Ivory film Shakespeare Wallah (inspired by her and Felicity’s parents’ company), after which she married Kapoor.

Peak of fitness: Willing a tub of plants to grow by cooing at them in her trademark croaky voice in The Good Life episode I Talk To The Trees (1976).

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