Christopher Timothy
Actor
Christopher Timothy was born on 14 October 1940 in Bala, Merionethshire, north Wales, the son of Andrew Timothy, an Anglican clergyman and BBC radio announcer well remembered as the original announcer of the long-running radio comedy Just a Minute, and his wife Gwladys Marian (nee Hailstone). The family left Wales when Christopher was five, moving first to south London and later, when he was thirteen, to Shrewsbury, where he was educated at Kingsland Grange Preparatory School and Priory Grammar School for Boys.
Timothy trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and began his career on the London stage, becoming part of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre company during the 1960s. He appeared in productions including The Master Builder, Juno and the Paycock and Olivier's own celebrated production of Othello.
He is best known to television audiences for playing the young Yorkshire vet James Herriot in the BBC's long-running adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small, a role he played for the full run of ninety episodes between 1978 and 1990. He later became a familiar face in two further long-running BBC dramas, playing Mac McGuire in the daytime soap Doctors and Ted Murray in EastEnders.
Timothy has been married twice, first to Susan Boys, with whom he had four sons and two daughters, and since 1982 to Annie Veronica Swatton, with whom he has a daughter. Though he left Wales as a small child, Bala remains his confirmed birthplace and the starting point of a career spent largely on British television.