Scales' sons, Samuel and Joseph West, said she died &34;peacefully at home in London&34; on Monday. Prunella Scales, British actress and Fawlty Towers star, dies at 93 Scales' sons, Samuel and Joseph West, said she died &34;peacefully at home in London&34; on Monday. By Mekishana Pierre :maxbytes(150000):stripicc()/MekishanaPierreauthorphotoed08906b8105488ca1e991de8ac00dec.jpg) Mekishana Pierre Mekishana Pierre is a news writer at . She has been working at EW since 2025. Her work has previously appeared on Entertainment Tonight and Popsugar. EW's editorial guidelines October 28, 2025 11:21 a.

Scales' sons, Samuel and Joseph West, said she died "peacefully at home in London" on Monday.

Prunella Scales, British actress and Fawlty Towers star, dies at 93

Scales' sons, Samuel and Joseph West, said she died "peacefully at home in London" on Monday.

By Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2025. Her work has previously appeared on *Entertainment Tonight* and Popsugar.

EW's editorial guidelines

October 28, 2025 11:21 a.m. ET

Prunella Scales on 'Fawlty Towers'. Credit:

Don Smith/Radio Times via Getty

Prunella Scales, the British actress who became a household name playing the long-suffering and domineering Sybil Fawlty on the Britcom *Fawlty Towers*, has died. She was 93.

Scales' sons, Samuel and Joseph West, confirmed her death via social media on Tuesday morning, sharing that their mother "died peacefully at home in London" on Monday.

"Although dementia forced her retirement from a remarkable acting career of nearly 70 years, she continued to live at home," her sons wrote. "She was watching 'Fawlty Towers' the day before she died."

Scales was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2013.

Sharing their gratitude to fans for their support, the pair added, "We would like to thank all those who gave Pru such wonderful care at the end of her life: her last days were comfortable, contented and surrounded by love."

Born Prunella Margaret Rumney Scales Illingworth on June 22, 1932, in Sutton Abinger, Surrey, the actress began her career in 1955, when she played Ermengarde in the inaugural production of Thornton Wilder's *The Matchmaker* at the Haymarket Theater. Scales remained with the production for its nine-month run before transferring to Broadway studied acting under Uta Hagen at the Herbert Berghof Studio.

Scales returned to England and joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theater (later the Royal Shakespeare Company), where she appeared in several productions including *The Merchant of Venice*, *Measure for Measure* and Peter Hall's first production, *Love Labour's Lost*.**

Prunella Scales in 2008.

Gareth Cattermole/Getty

Her breakout TV role was on the BBC sitcom *The Marriage Lines* which ran from 1961 to 1966. Scales starred as a newlywed, frustrated homemaker settling into domesticity with her office worker husband played by Richard Briers.**

*Fawlty Towers* established Scales' role as a TV darling; the actress starred as the wife of Basil Fawlty (played by John Cleese), a rude hotel manager who forever appeared to be on the brink of a nervous breakdown. The series ran for two seasons, chronicling the outlandish hijinks that Basil and Sybil pulled off while attempting to run a hotel near the British seaside.

The show was named No. 1 in a list of the top 100 British television shows by the British Film Institute in 2000 and the best British sitcom of all time by Radio Times.**

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And while Scales is probably best remembered for her portrayal of Sybil, she had plenty of other credits to her name, including the films *Room at the Top *(1959), *Howards End *(1992), *The Boys From Brazil *(1978), *The Hound of the Baskervilles *(1978), *Wolf *(1994), and *Johnny English *(2003).

Scales also played the queen memorably multiple times: she had a small role as the queen in spy comedy *Johnny English*, where the royal's abdication is a major plot point. But perhaps her best turn was in both the stage and subsequent television adaptation of Alan Bennett's *A Question of Attribution*, a play about notorious British art expert and former Soviet agent Sir Anthony Blunt. The 1991 screen version earned her a BAFTA nomination.

Scales was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1992 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.

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The actress married fellow British actor Timothy West in 1963, with whom she hosted the Channel 4 travel series *Great Canal Journeys* from 2014 to 2019. The couple explored waterways in Britain and abroad while Scales grappled with her dementia. *The Guardian* called the series "bittersweet," noting that each episode "charted the long, slow goodbye that is living with dementia."

West died in 2024 at the age of 90.

Scales is survived by her sons, a stepdaughter, Juliet, from West's first marriage, seven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.**

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