It is the fate of any actor or actress who is inextricably associated with one major role that, when they die, the obituaries will lead with their best-known part rather than any of their other accomplishments. So it has proved with the great classical actress Patricia Routledge, who has died at the grand old age of 96.

There are so many things to celebrate about Routledge’s life, whether it’s her collaborations with Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood, her distinguished stage career (which lasted right up until her eighties) or such thoroughly enjoyable slices of middlebrow televisual fluff as Hetty Wainthrop Investigates . But in truth, the cry ‘ Keeping Up Appearances actress dies’ is likely to be the pervasive one. It is not hard to see why.

Routledge led a distinguished, eclectic car

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