Kit Hesketh-Harvey, the British composer and screenwriter who counted the royals as fans, has died aged 65.
The entertainer had a long and multifaceted career, working in theatre, television, music and film. Hesketh-Harvey worked on BBC shows, including the hit sitcom The Vicar of Dibley, and until 2012 was part of the long-running cabaret duo Kit and the Widow alongside pianist Richard Sisson. He wrote the screenplay for the 1987 Merchant Ivory film Maurice, which starred a young Hugh Grant, and was adept at playing a variety of pantomime baddies. King Charles was said to be a great admirer of his work.
Born Christopher John “Kit” Hesketh-Harvey in the former Nyasaland (now Malawi), he was educated at Canterbury Cathedral and then Tonbridge School in Kent. He studied English literature at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was also a member of the Footlights drama club. Later he would study under Stephen Sondheim during his visiting professorship at Oxford University.
A keen lyricist, Hesketh-Harvey also boasted a great knowledge of classical music and opera. In 2010 he wrote a piece for the Guardian about the challenges he faced working on a script for Monteverdi’s Flying Circus, a stage show about the father of modern opera’s final days: “His musical vocabulary is arcane to modern ears. There are long episodes of recitative which are too often accompanied by restless coughing in the stalls. The instrumentation and the ornamentation are unfamiliar. The three or four-hour operatic scenarios are less approachable to an audience used to those punchier, later Italians, Verdi and Puccini.” His version of Donizetti’s comic opera Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali – which he had titled Viva la Diva – was performed at Buxton international festival in the summer of 2022.
Until their recent divorce, Hesketh-Harvey had been married to the actor Catherine Rabett, an original member of dance troupe Hot Gossip and a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew. The pair split in 2021, after 35 years of marriage. They had two children, Augusta and Rollo. Hesketh-Harvey was also the brother of former Today editor Sarah Sands. Speaking to the Independent, Sands said: “Kit was dazzling – clever, original, funny, kind. The last time I saw him he was busy mapping out pilgrim routes across Norfolk; there was always the next adventure, the next joke. He gave and gave and gave.”
