Dame Patricia Routledge: The life of TV's magnificently snobby 'Hyacinth Bucket'

Katherine Patricia Routledge was born in Birkenhead on 17 February 1929.

Her father was a haberdasher and she later recalled sheltering from German bombs in the basement of his shop during the war.

She studied English at the nearby Liverpool University and intended to teach. Instead, she joined the Liverpool Playhouse before training at the Bristol Old Vic.

Her successful stage career took her from the provinces to the West End, and eventually to Broadway, where Leonard Bernstein chose her to star in his musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1976.

She had already won a Tony award for her performance in Darling of the Day.

She could move effortlessly from comedies to classics.

She went from Stratford-upon-Avon, appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company and then to the National Theatre in London.

There, her starring role in the stage musical Carousel involved her singing the rousing You'll Never Walk Alone.

There were also various minor film roles, notably in the 1967's, To Sir, With Love, and the Jerry Lewis comedy outing, Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River.

Her stage and radio work proved her versatility and won her awards, but it was television that provided Routledge with her most high profile roles.

Early small-screen work included popular programmes like Z Cars and Steptoe and Son.

And later, one of Britain's most respected playwrights, Alan Bennett, wrote a set of outstanding Talking Heads TV monologues for her.

Routledge overcame her initial reluctance to perform his scripts and excelled as A Woman of No Importance and A Lady of Letters.

She went onto play a lonely, middle-aged department store clerk tipped into a relationship with a kinky podiatrist in Bennett's Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet.

A comic turn as the larger-than-life Kitty on The Victoria Wood Show led to the creation of Hyacinth Bucket.

Routledge recalled being sent the scripts by the writer, Roy Clarke - who had also done Last of the Summer Wine and Open All Hours.

"I had opened the script for a moment at one o'clock in the morning," she said, "I read straight through and Hyacinth leapt off the page. I knew that woman, I knew several of that woman."

Keeping Up Appearances ran for five series and included four Christmas specials.

In a documentary, she later claimed that fans had included Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother and Pope Benedict XVI.

Playing the homely but astute detective in Hetty Wainthropp Investigates brought her continued success on television, but she always called the stage "the test".

Long after she stopped appearing regularly on screen, Routledge made theatre tours both in the UK and abroad.

Whenever interviewers asked the inevitable question, she asked them to spell out the word retirement because, she explained: "It's not in my vocabulary."

She never married or had children, but told interviewers of two great affairs in her youth, one with a married man.

"I felt guilt and an acute sense that there had to be loss," she confessed.

"I suppose I convinced myself that it was all right for the time being because his marriage was not a living thing."

Instead, she dedicated herself to her craft, serving it with the talent, discipline and commitment that were always admired by her colleagues.