Patricia Routledge, the versatile actor best known for playing Hyacinth Bucket in the BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, has died at the age of 96. Her career spanned musicals, classics and modern drama, with a defining ability to bring humanity to eccentrics and outsiders.
Routledge's portrayal of the absurdly pretentious Hyacinth Bucket—who insisted her surname was pronounced 'bouquet'—made her a household name. She also excelled on stage, notably as Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals at Manchester's Royal Exchange in 1976, where critic Irving Wardle praised her for playing 'not a grotesque old dragon but a giggling, would-be merry widow'.
Her performances in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads were particularly acclaimed. In A Woman of No Importance, she played a clerical worker facing hospitalised solitude, with Frank Rich of the New York Times comparing it to Beckett's Happy Days. In A Lady of Letters, she portrayed a letter-writing busybody who finds companionship in jail.
Routledge also enjoyed success in musicals, sharing a Tony award in 1968 for Darling of the Day and delivering a memorable rendition of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' in the National Theatre's 1992 production of Carousel. She was made a dame in 2017.
