 A hugely enjoyable character player, Basil Radford was one of those actors who does one thing superbly well: he perfected the slightly flummoxed, unfailingly courteous, public-school, civil-servant type. He and Naunton Wayne, as the cricketing fanatics, Charters and Caldicott, brought moments of pure joy to The Lady Vanishes (d. Alfred Hitchcock, 1938), Night Train to Munich (d. Carol Reed, 1940), and Millions Like Us (d. Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat, 1943), films already enjoyable enriched further by their quintessential Englishness, played perfectly straight and leaving the audience to assess the parody level. They also appeared together memorably in such other films as Dead of Night (in 'Golfing Story', d. Charles Crichton, 1945) and Passport to Pimlico (d. Henry Cornelius, 1949), as Whitehall chaps. Radford, on stage from 1922, was untypically touching as the family solicitor who proposes to the sister of The Winslow Boy (d. Anthony Asquith, 1948) and had perhaps his finest hour as Colonel Waggett driven to distraction in Whisky Galore! (d. Alexander Mackendrick, 1949). He died sadly young from a heart attack. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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