From: YourName@YourISP.com   
      
       English actor Jack Shepherd, star of Wycliffe, dies at 85   
       ---------------------------------------------------------   
       Jack Shepherd, the English actor perhaps best remembered for playing   
       the title role in the 1990s ITV detective drama Wycliffe, has died   
       at the age of 85.   
      
       The Leeds-born TV star passed away in hospital following a "short   
       illness", with his wife and children present, PA news agency reports.   
      
       "His passing is a sad loss to us all," said his agents Markham,   
       Froggatt and Irwin.   
      
       Awards he received include an Olivier for the original production of   
       the stage play Glengarry Glen Ross in 1983.   
      
       He had an earlier television incarnation as Bill Brand in the 1970s   
       ITV series of the same name about a fictional firebrand Labour MP.   
      
       Shepherd also had numerous film roles and was a playwright and   
       theatre director.   
      
       After school in Leeds, he won a scholarship to Newcastle University   
       to study fine art, then moved to London to study at The Central   
       School for Speech and Drama.   
      
       He went on to perform in the National Theatre and Royal Court   
       theatre.   
      
       For his breakthrough TV role as Bill Brand, he won a Bafta   
       nomination in the best actor category in 1977.   
      
       The show was described in a Spectator tribute last year as a "time   
       capsule of the 1970s - the brown everywhere, the fag-smoke and   
       lunchtime beer, the patterned wallpaper, the rusty Ford Cortinas and   
       sense of national decay".   
      
       The character Shepherd portrays is described as "part of a long   
       tradition, reminding the Left of the principles it has wandered from   
       in the search for power".   
      
       As the thoughtful Det Supt Charles Wycliffe, Shepherd solved murders   
       in Cornwall over 36 episodes between 1993 and 1998.   
      
       His work as an actor in BBC productions ranged from a schoolteacher   
       in Play for Today: Pidgeon - Hawk Or Dove? (1974) to a barrister in   
       Blind Justice (1988), and from the Austrian composer Franz Joseph   
       Haydn in the BBC docudrama Beethoven (2005) to an Auschwitz inmate   
       in the drama God on Trial (2008).   
      
       Shepherd directed The Two Gentlemen Of Verona in 1996 at   
       Shakespeare's Globe and the production also went to Broadway.   
      
       He worked with director Bill Bryden on numerous theatre productions   
       and was also a saxophonist and jazz pianist.   
      
       Jack Shepherd is survived by his wife Ann Scott and five children Jan,   
       Jake, Victoria, Catherine and Ben.   
      
      
          
      
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