Career
After his death, his ashes were scattered on the waters off Bombay. Born Richard Geoffrey Bragg in Kendal, Westmorland, he took the name of his place of birth as his surname. Their two daughters, Jennifer (b 1933) and Felicity Kendal (b 1946), became successful actresses.
She died of cancer in 1984.
After attending theatre classes at Lancaster, Geoffrey went on to join various repertory theatre companies which performed across small English towns. After appearing with Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) during the Second World War entertaining troops overseas, he along with his troupe performed in Hong Kong, Singapore and the backwaters of Malaya and Borneo, finally arriving in India in 1944.
Thereafter he made his living as an actor-manager leading the repertory theatre company "Shakespeareana" on tour throughout India in the 1940s and 1950s. They would perform Shakespeare before royalty one day, and in rural villages the next.
Many of their audiences were schoolchildren.
Their story was loosely told by Merchant Ivory in their feature film Shakespeare Wallah (1965), in which he played the role of his fictionalized self, Tony Buckingham. Kendal"s life story, The Shakespeare Wallah: the Autobiography of Geoffrey Kendal, co-authored by Clare Colvin, was published in 1986. He died on 14 May 1998, aged 88.