With a career ranging from Shakespeare to EastEnders and the series Great Canal Journeys, actor was a familiar face from the 1960s onwards

• Michael Billington: West was a modest maestro who embodied the best of British theatre

The actor Timothy West, whose career ranged from Shakespeare, Ibsen and Pinter on stage to TV appearances in Brass, EastEnders and Great Canal Journeys (with his wife, Prunella Scales), has died aged 90.

His children, Juliet, Samuel and Joseph West, said in a statement issued by his agent: “After a long and extraordinary life on and off the stage, our darling father, Timothy West, died peacefully in his sleep yesterday evening. He was 90 years old.