In 1939, at the start of the Second World War, Prunella Scales's parents moved with their children to Bucks Mill near Bideford in Devon.
32 Facts About Prunella Scales
2.
In 1942 Prunella Scales was awarded a scholarship to Moira House School which had been evacuated from Eastbourne to a hotel on Lake Windermere in Lancashire; her mother and brother accompanied her.
3.
Prunella Scales carried on her schooling when Moira House returned to Eastbourne.
4.
Prunella Scales was awarded a scholarship for the two year course at The Old Vic School in 1949; Moira House School had wished her to apply to Oxbridge.
5.
Prunella Scales started her career in 1951 as an assistant stage manager at the Bristol Old Vic.
6.
Prunella Scales played her most famous role, Sybil Fawlty in the sitcom Fawlty Towers, over two series in 1975 and 1979.
7.
Prunella Scales played Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett's A Question of Attribution.
8.
In 1973, Prunella Scales was cast with Ronnie Barker in One Man's Meat which formed part of Barker's Seven of One series, for the BBC.
9.
For ten years, Prunella Scales appeared as "Dotty" Turnbull, together with Jane Horrocks as her character's daughter, Kate Neall, in advertisements for UK supermarket chain Tesco.
10.
In 1996, Prunella Scales starred in the television film Lord of Misrule, alongside Richard Wilson, Emily Mortimer and Stephen Moyer.
11.
In 1997, Prunella Scales starred in Chris Barfoot's science-fiction film short Phoenix which was first aired in 1999 by NBCUniversal's Sci-Fi Channel.
12.
Prunella Scales played The Client, an evil government minister funding inter-genetic time travel experiments.
13.
In 1993 Prunella Scales voiced Mrs Tiggy-Winkle in The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends.
14.
In 2000, Prunella Scales appeared in the film The Ghost of Greville Lodge as Sarah.
15.
Prunella Scales appeared in a one-woman show called An Evening with Queen Victoria, which featured the tenor Ian Partridge singing songs written by Prince Albert.
16.
Prunella Scales has performed An Evening with Queen Victoria more than 400 times, in theatres around the world, over the course of 30 years.
17.
Prunella Scales voiced the speaking role of Magpie, the eponymous thief in a 2003 recording of Gioachino Rossini's opera La gazza ladra.
18.
In 2006, Prunella Scales appeared alongside Academy Award winners Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell in the mini-series The Shell Seekers.
19.
On 16 November 2007, Prunella Scales appeared in Children in Need, reprising her role as Sybil Fawlty, the new manager who wants to take over Hotel Babylon.
20.
Prunella Scales appeared in the audio play The Youth of Old Age, produced in 2008 by the Wireless Theatre Company, and available to download free of charge on their website.
21.
Prunella Scales appeared in a production of Carrie's War, the Nina Bawden novel, at the West End Apollo Theatre in 2009.
22.
Prunella Scales starred in the 2011 British live-action 3D family comedy film Horrid Henry: The Movie as the titular character's Great Aunt Greta.
23.
Prunella Scales starred in a short film called "Stranger Danger" alongside Roderick Cowie in 2012.
24.
Alongside her husband, Prunella Scales appeared in Great Canal Journeys for Channel 4 from 2014 for ten series, before her deteriorating health brought her television career to an end.
25.
In 1992 Prunella Scales appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
26.
Prunella Scales's chosen book was the Complete Works of Shakespeare in German, the Bible in Russian, and a Russian dictionary; her luxury item was "a huge tapestry kit".
27.
Prunella Scales is a patron of the Lace Market Theatre in Nottingham.
28.
Prunella Scales is married to the actor Timothy West, with whom she has two sons; the elder is actor and director Samuel West.
29.
Prunella Scales has been an ambassador for SOS Children's Villages charity, an international orphan charity providing homes and mothers for orphaned and abandoned children.
30.
In March 2014, Prunella Scales's husband told The Guardian that she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
31.
Prunella Scales was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours List.
32.
Prunella Scales's husband had received the same honour in the 1984 Birthday Honours List.