Richard Morant obituary in “The Guardian” in 2011.
Richard Morant was born in 1945 in Surrey. He is best known for his terrific performance of the scoundral Flashman in the 1971 TV series “Tom Brown’s School Days”. Among his other credits are the movies “Mahler” in 1974 and “Scandal” in 1989. Sadly Richard Morant passed away in 2011.
Anthony Hayward’s “Guardian” obituary:
The dark good looks of the actor Richard Morant, who has died of an aneurism aged 66, were familiar to television viewers over several decades. For a while, he was cast in young romantic lead roles before settling down as a character actor. He found plenty of drama as the dashing doctor Dwight Enys, who commits himself to tending to the poor in the 1970s BBC’s serialisation of Winston Graham’s Poldark novels. While Ross Poldark (Robin Ellis) is marrying his servant, Demelza (Angharad Rees), after losing his fiancee to his cousin, the doctor is himself setting pulses racing amid the wilds of 18th-century Cornwall. Although Morant handed over the role to Michael Cadman after just one series (1975-76), his was a memorable portrayal of a character who has an affair with a married actress – resulting in her husband murdering her – and falls for an heiress. In a retrospective programme, The Cult of Poldark, in 2008, Morant offered his explanation for the drama’s continuing popularity. “It’s about love, betrayal – the things that hurt us, that give us joy. It evokes strong attachments, strong passion.”
Alongside his acting work, Morant showed a head for business when, in the 1970s, he opened a shop in Holland Park, west London, selling Indian fashions and jewellery. He then became a partner in a carpet and rug business, which he eventually took over in 2005, trading under his own name from nearby Notting Hill.
Morant was born in Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, into a family of actors. His father, Philip, played John Tregorran in the radio soap The Archers and performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His uncle was Bill Travers and his cousin Penelope Wilton. He attended Hill Place school, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, and – after the family’s move to London in 1959 – William Penn school, Dulwich. Like his sisters, Angela and Jane, he trained at Central School of Speech and Drama (1964-66), where he met Melissa Fairbanks, daughter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
By the time they married in 1969, Morant was touring with the Prospect Theatre Company. He played the Earl of Salisbury in Richard II on a national tour in 1968 and then combined that with the role of the Earl of Leicester in Edward II on another tour (1969-70) that included runs at the Mermaid theatre (1969) and the Piccadilly theatre (1970). The BBC recorded both productions. Morant then had his breakthrough on the small screen, playing Flashman in a 1971 adaptation of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. He remained busy on television, with notable roles as the future Charles II in Sir Walter Scott’s English civil war drama Woodstock (1973); Conrade of Montserrat in the same author’s Richard the Lionheart saga The Talisman (1981); Robespierre in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982); Jamieson, the boyfriend of Stephanie Beacham’s title character, in the fashion-world drama Connie (1985); Captain Oates in The Last Place on Earth (1985) and the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, in John and Yoko: A Love Story (1985). His last acting role on television was in the unsolved-crimes drama New Tricks in 2010.
Morant’s first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, the actor Valerie Buchanan, whom he married in 1982, and the two children from each of his marriages, Joseph and Crystal, and Jake and Tama.
• Richard Lindon Harvey Morant, actor, born 30 October 1945; died 9 November 2011
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here
