From his 20-odd films, Peter Jeffrey is now probably best remembered for the three films he did for Lindsay Anderson: If.... (1968), as the super-executive headmaster; O Lucky Man! (1973), as both coffee-factory boss and prison governor; and Britannia Hospital (1982), as the sceptical senior surgeon. Harrow- and Cambridge-educated, a former teacher, he played with the Bristol Old Vic, the National and the RSC. He belongs to the great tradition of versatile, utterly dependable British character actors, as he showed on TV as well, in such diverse fare as Middlemarch (BBC, 1994), as the unmasked hypocrite Bulstrode, and Our Friends in the North (BBC, 1996). Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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