My mother, Jill Freud, who has died aged 98, was a dynamic actor and producer, and the founder of one of the UK’s most cherished summer rep theatres.
On graduating from the Rada drama school in London in 1947, Jill, under the stage name Jill Raymond, was given a leading role in the film The Woman in the Hall, starring Jean Simmons. She also worked in radio and television, including as a voice actor on the children’s puppet series Torchy the Battery Boy for ITV (1959-61). On stage, a highlight was The Dame of Sark with Celia Johnson at the Wyndham theatre (1974).
She was a highly active MP’s wife, married to the Liberal politician Clement Freud, and the mother of five children, but it was not until later life that she truly flourished creatively. In 1980, in her 60s, she founded Jill Freud & Company, producing seasons of summer repertory in Southwold and Aldeburgh for three decades.
The company brought high-quality theatre to coastal Suffolk, produced hundreds of plays, toured abroad, and became a cherished local institution. Actors she hired returned year after year, drawn by Jill’s fairness, wit and unwavering belief in the rights of the company members, and the importance of regional theatre. Her legacy continues each summer in the playhouses she brought to life.
Born June Flewett in Barnes, south-west London, the daughter of Winifred (nee Johnson) and Henry Flewett, a classics teacher at St Paul’s school, she went to the Sacred Heart convent school, Hammersmith. At the start of the second world war she was evacuated to Oxford, where she was billeted with a succession of homeowners, before, aged 15, she was sent to a house owned by an academic known as Jack. At first, she had no idea that he was actually her favourite writer, CS Lewis. She became a beloved member of the household for three years, and later discovered that Lewis had acknowledged her as the inspiration for Lucy Pevensie in his classic children’s series The Chronicles of Narnia. Jill carried that same sense of Lucy’s curiosity, courage and clear-sighted kindness throughout her life.
After the war she won her place at Rada, where she was a contemporary of the young Roger Moore; her time there was graciously funded by Lewis. In 1950 she married Clement, a writer, broadcaster, chef and, from 1973, an MP. Together they raised their children in an energetic, unconventional household that often blurred the boundaries between domestic life, politics and the arts.
Jill was known for her warmth, her keen intelligence and her wicked sense of humour. She was widowed in 2009, but remained sharp, engaged and eccentric, claiming the secret to her vitality was having the same lunch every day – a glass of red wine, a packet of crisps and the Guardian. She was 95 when she recorded her final radio play, and her last film role was a cameo as the housekeeper at Downing Street in the 2003 film Love Actually.
In 2001 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia for services to theatre.
Jill is survived by her five children, Nicola, Ashley, Dominic, Matthew and me, 18 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
• This article was amended on 28 November 2025. Torchy the Battery Boy was broadcast on ITV rather than the BBC.
