Biography

Patrick William Simpson Waddington (19 August 1901 – 4 February 1987) was an English actor, educated at Gresham's School at Holt in Norfolk. He was born and died in York, England. Waddington was the grandson of William Waddington, the piano manufacturer who also took over the management of the Theatre Royal York. After Gresham's School and St John's College, Oxford, he started his career singing, and in the 1930s was in That Certain Trio with Peggy Cochrane. On stage from 1924, often in upper-class roles, his theatre work included the original West End run of Patrick Hamilton's Rope in 1929; a lengthy tour of My Fair Lady, as Colonel Pickering, in 1963–5; and the musical Kean on Broadway, in 1961. Film and TV included The Wooden Horse (1950),

A Night to Remember (1958), and two episodes of Dad's Army, as 'The Brigadier'.In 1951 he became General Secretary of TACT (The Actors Charitable Trust) and was headmaster of its children's home, Silverlands, until 1953. A plaque to commemorate him can be seen in the Courtyard entrance to the Merchant Adventurers' Hall in York - he was a member of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York from 1933 to his death in 1987. In 1986, he self-published his autobiography, Patrick: Or, That Awful Warning.