Remembering Dame Patricia Routledge | 1929-2025 | Reminisences from AESS leaders
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- 7 days ago
- 4 min read
Dame Patricia Routledge died on 3 October 2025. She has rightly had many obituaries in the press, and it's wonderful to see how she was respected and loved. We've lost a National Treasure.
Dame Patricia has taken an active interest in our association for years now, and she was corresponding right up until the last few months of her life. Our Patricia Routledge competition ran this July, and she was keen to know the details, and wanted to know how it had gone. She has very generously sponsored this prize for years now. Coming relatively recently to the association, I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but we corresponded this year. I'll leave it to others who knew her better to share their memories of this astonishing lady.
James Gilchrist | Current Chair AESS (Association of English Speakers and Singers)
Dame Patricia Routledge was approached by previous AESS chairman Niven Miller about 25 years ago and readily agreed to provide funds annually for our senior competition. Without prompting (Patricia never needed a prompt!), the prize money was regularly increased at her own volition.
She had very strong views about clarity of speech and performance, and always attended the finals when possible, depending on her own acting schedule. Patricia was always word-perfect at the first rehearsal of a play and expected other members of the cast to be the same. She often expressed her disappointment to me that this did not always happen. Patricia telephoned one morning for a chat and I asked her how rehearsals were going for her current play. There was a longish pause after which she said "the assistant director is very good". (I will keep the title of the play to myself.)
Long before AESS days, I had seen Patricia in ‘The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein’ and many times in ‘Cowardy Custard’ where she produced the definitive version of ‘I’ve been to a marvellous party’ night after night, sliding tipsily down the grand piano to the floor. Richard Lewis and I saw her in a one-woman show in Cambridge ‘Come for the Ride’ in which she sang a lovely song by Julian Slade. I wrote to her and asked if there was a chance of knowing where to find a copy. She wrote back to say the song was written for her by Julian and not published, and I couldn’t have it! When I later met her at the AESS before being chairman, she said no again. And at the annual dinner, when I stood down from the chair, she recounted this story and finished by saying "you still can’t have it"!
Patricia loved Malvern Theatre, and we often saw her perform there. She would then come over to Knighton and stay at a local country hotel (now closed). She once entertained Richard and me to supper there. It had a beautiful, dimly lit dining room, and that evening was full. When the main courses were served, Richard was wrongly given pork. Patricia said to the waiter, "he ordered the pollock, not the pork," at which the whole dining room fell silent and turned to our table, having heard the full force of Hyacinth Bucket (Bouquet) about them.
Graham Trew | Former Chair AESS
My husband and I had admired Patricia Routledge since 1985, when we saw her in J.B. Priestley’s comedy, ‘When We Are Married’ at The Whitehall Theatre. I remember that her skill as a singer as well as an actress was very evident.
Dame Patricia has, of course, been a generous sponsor of the AESS National English Song Prize since 2003, but I first met her in 2001 when I was cast as a ‘hand double’ for her in the TV Docudrama ‘Anybody’s Nightmare’. She played the part of a piano teacher wrongly convicted of murdering her elderly aunt. It was a true story and made National News. Some of you might remember it?
A colleague was initially asked to be the double, but her hands were considered too small and slim. She kindly put my name forward; photos were taken, my hands and arms were considered suitably plump and reasonably ‘old’ looking. I then had a couple of trips to different ‘secret’ locations, and at one, I was taken to meet Dame Patricia. We sat together for several minutes, and she chatted very affably, explaining that although she could play the piano, the Mozart and Haydn pieces being used were a bit too fast. She then enquired after my training and how I came to be there, and hearing that I had studied at the Guildhall School, (in John Carpenter Street days) she was keen to know if I had any of her tutors, as evidently she had been there for a while too.
Dame Patricia attended AESS’s Centenary celebrations in 2013, and we spoke again then. I also found myself sitting beside her at our Annual Dinner. She referred to G.S.M.& D days, and mentioned Walther Grὔner, a rather fearsome Lieder Professor whom we both knew.
Patricia Williams | AESS Membership Secretary
