Derek Bond

Life and career

Derek Bond was born on 26 January 1920 in Glasgow, Scotland. He attended Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Hampstead, London. He saw active service with the Grenadier Guards in North Africa during the Second World War, for which he was awarded the Military Cross. He spent the last few months of the war in Stalag VII-A, a Bavarian POW camp.

He enjoyed a varied film, stage and television career, which began in 1938 with experience with the Finchley Amateur Dramatic Society. His conventional good looks secured him a number of dramatic and light comedy roles. He made a lasting impression in the title role of the Ealing Studios production of Nicholas Nickleby (1947).

As well as acting, he wrote a number of scripts; his first drama for television was Unscheduled Stop, produced for ITV's Armchair Theatre in 1968 and directed by Toby Robertson.

He was President of the Actors' Union Equity for a tempestuous period during the 1980s. In 1984, because of his intention to perform in South Africa (the country's apartheid system was the cause of a UN-backed cultural boycott), a motion urging Bond to resign was proposed, but rejected, in July 1984. He later resigned when a ban on members working in South Africa became union policy after his return to the UK.

Derek Bond was married three times. He died on 15 October 2006, in London, and is survived by his third wife Annie, a son, a daughter and a stepson.