The British veteran actor Alec McCowen who for over 50 years enjoyed enormous success on both the stage and in films, died on Monday aged 91 years old.

His very long and illustrious career as a one time member of The Royal Shakespeare Company took him from London’s  West End to Broadway having him play everything from The Fool in King Lear to the title role in a play about Rudyard Kipling.  Even more significant was St. Mark’s Gospel a one-man show McCowen performed that proved to be successful both in London and on Broadway. 

His many film roles including playing Q in the 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again, a police officer in Hitchcock’s Frenzy, and the Bishop of Ely in Henry V.  However what queerguru will always so fondly remember him for is the one time he played lead with c0-star Maggie Smith in the outrageous comedy Travels With My Aunt for which he won a Golden Globe Nomination.

McCowen was openly gay, and actually refused to be the subject on TV’s This is Your Life unless his partner the actor Geoffrey Burridge  was acknowledged.   Burridge died in 1987 aged 38 from an AIDS related illness.