Lyndon Brook was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 actor, on film and television.

Born in York

York

York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

, Brook came from an established acting family. His father, Clive Brook, had been a star of the silent movies and had moved to Hollywood to play quintessential Englishmen in a host of films. Brook’s parents sent their son back to England to be educated at Stowe and then he gained stage experience at Cambridge. His elder sister, Faith

Faith Brook

Faith Brook is an English actress who has appeared on stage, in films and on television.Her father was the actor Clive Brook, and her brother Lyndon Brook was also an actor. Her first credited film appearance was The Jungle Book in 1942...

, is also an actress.

In 1949, he got a minor part in the film Train of Events

Train of Events

Train of Events is a 1949 British film made by Ealing Studios directed by Sidney Cole, Charles Crichton and Basil Dearden.A portmanteau work, it tells the various stories of the passengers who are on a train which crashes into a stalled petrol tanker at a level crossing.-Plot:The film opens with a...

, which starred Valerie Hobson

Valerie Hobson

Valerie Hobson was a British actress who appeared in a number of British films during the 1940s and 1950s...

 (the future Mrs John Profumo

John Profumo

Brigadier John Dennis Profumo, 5th Baron Profumo CBE , informally known as Jack Profumo , was a British politician. His title, 5th Baron, which he did not use, was Italian. Although Profumo held an increasingly responsible series of political posts in the 1950s, he is best known today for his...

) and John Clements

John Clements

Sir John Selby Clements, CBE was an English actor and producer who worked in theatre, television and film.Clements attended St Paul's School and St John's College, Cambridge University then worked with Nigel Playfair and afterwards spent a few years in Ben Greet's Shakespearean Company. He made...

.

In 1951, Brook was asked by Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

 to join his company at the St James’s Theatre in Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

’s Caesar and Cleopatra

Caesar and Cleopatra (play)

Caesar and Cleopatra, a play written in 1898 by George Bernard Shaw, was first staged in 1901 and first published with Captain Brassbound's Conversion and The Devil's Disciple in his 1901 collection, Three Plays for Puritans. It was first performed at Newcastle-on-Tyne on March 15, 1899...

. The double production was set up to celebrate the Festival of Britain

Festival of Britain

The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition in Britain in the summer of 1951. It was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote good quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival's centrepiece was in...

. It was whilst appearing in these productions that he met his future wife, the actress Elizabeth Kentish.

In 1954 Brook played an impressionable navigator opposite Gregory Peck

Gregory Peck

Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...

 in The Purple Plain

The Purple Plain

The Purple Plain is a 1954 British war film, directed by Robert Parrish, with Gregory Peck playing a Canadian pilot serving in the Royal Air Force in Burma in the closing months of the World War II, who is battling with depression after having lost his wife...

. The film was set during the Burma campaign and involved a lengthy trek through the jungle. It enjoyed a huge success at the box office. Two years later, Brook co-starred with Kenneth More

Kenneth More

Kenneth Gilbert More CBE was a highly successful English film actor during the post-World War II era and starred in many feature films, often in the role of an archetypal carefree and happy-go-lucky middle-class gentleman.-Early life:Kenneth More was born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the...

 in one of the most popular of all Second World War dramas, Reach for the Sky

Reach for the Sky

Reach for the Sky is a 1956 British biographical film of aviator Douglas Bader, based on the 1954 biography of the same name by Paul Brickhill. The film stars Kenneth More and was directed by Lewis Gilbert. It won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film of 1956.-Plot:In 1928, Douglas Bader, a...

.

He appeared with Michael Hordern

Michael Hordern

Sir Michael Murray Hordern was an English actor, knighted in 1983 for his services to the theatre, which stretched back to before the Second World War.-Personal life:...

 and Dirk Bogarde

Dirk Bogarde

Sir Dirk Bogarde was an English actor and novelist. Initially a matinee idol in such films as Doctor in the House and other Rank Organisation pictures, Bogarde later acted in art-house films such as Death in Venice...

 in The Spanish Gardener

The Spanish Gardener (film)

The Spanish Gardener is a 1956 film based on the novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1950. The film stars Dirk Bogarde and Jon Whiteley, and was directed by Philip Leacock. The adaptation was filmed both at Pinewood Studios, situated outside of London, and in S'Agaro, on the Costa Brava...

(1956), and as Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 opposite Bogarde’s Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

 in Song Without End

Song Without End

Song Without End, subtitled The Story of Franz Liszt is a biographical film romance made by Columbia Pictures. It was directed by Charles Vidor, who died during the shooting of the picture and was replaced by George Cukor. It was produced by William Goetz from a screenplay by Oscar Millard,...

(1960).

Thereafter, Brook became a regular in many popular television dramas.
He made three appearances in The Avengers

The Avengers (TV series)

The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series set in the 1960s Britain. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed . Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants...

and The New Avengers, and landed roles in The Hireling, Plenty and Defence of the Realm in the 1970s. He also played George VI alongside Timothy West

Timothy West

Timothy Lancaster West, CBE is an English film, stage and television actor.-Career:West's craggy looks ensured a career as a character actor rather than a leading man. He began his career as an Assistant Stage Manager at the Wimbledon Theatre in 1956, and followed this with several seasons of...

’s Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

 in the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

’s Churchill and the Generals (1979).

Brook was a much published author and scripted the 1957 television series Love Her to Death with Peter Wyngarde

Peter Wyngarde

Peter Paul Wyngarde is an Anglo-French actor best known for playing the character Jason King, a bestselling novelist turned sleuth, in two British television series in the late 1960s and early 1970s: Department S and Jason King .-Biography:He was born Cyril Goldbert in Marseilles, France, the...

 in the leading role.

He died in London in 2004, aged 77.

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