Most children’s entertainment specialists are remembered by one generation. But such was the lifelong demand for the talents of Bernard Cribbins, who has died aged 93, that it is possible children who watched him in 1956 as Thomas Traddles in David Copperfield, the BBC’s first ever TV Dickens adaptation, listened with their great-grandchildren to The Jungle Book he recorded for the streamer Audible last year.
His familiarity to successive generations rested on his involvement in many of the most enduring TV franchises for school-age kids. He made 114 appearances as the storyteller on the young reading club Jackanory between 1966 and 1995, again meaning that those who watched him as children later tuned in with their own.
