John Wood RIP

I once read that every building in Chipping Campden High Street was listed, plus of course many others in the town. One of them was the much-loved home, more than 300 years old, of the actor John Wood, who died last week and is now rightly and lavishly mourned in the newspapers. Of his obituarists, Michael Coveney surprised me by writing that "His real passion was architecture, which he rated the most important of all the arts."

Only a day or two ago, when clearing out, I threw away theatre programmes bearing Wood's name as star of the show. Whether in Shakespeare or Stoppard, Gorki or Etherege, comedy or tragedy, he always seemed to me to excel: indeed, he was one of the few I actors whose performances I would invariably seek out. Why did he never get a knighthood? No doubt because he was too self-effacing.