Prunella Scales, my neighbour in Barnes, south-west London, in the 1960s, was gifted as a superb reader of poetry. Together with Michael Hordern, Richard Pasco and Janet Suzman, she read the poems in John Betjeman’s much-loved 1977 BBC TV “aerial anthology” The Queen’s Realm: A Prospect of England. Betjeman, himself an incomparable reader of poems, particularly admired her “unactorish” rendering of Philip Larkin.

When Betjeman was incapacitated by a stroke and beyond speech, Pru used to visit his bedside regularly to read aloud to him. It was a characteristic gesture from a warm-hearted and generous woman.