Roy Dotrice (26 May 1923 – 16 October 2017) was a British actor famed for his portrayal of the antiquarian John Aubrey in the record-breaking solo play Brief Lives. Abroad, he won a Tony Award for his performance in the 2000 Broadway revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, also appearing as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father Leopold in Amadeus (1984), Charles Dickens in Dickens of London (1984), and Jacob Wells/Father in Beauty and the Beast. Late in life, he narrated a series of audiobooks for George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, for which he held the Guinness World Record for the most character voices for an audiobook by an individual. Life and career Dotrice was born in Guernsey, Bailiwick of Guernsey on 26 May 1923 to Neva (née Wilton; 1897–1984) and Louis Dotrice (1896–1991). He served as a wireless operator/air gunner with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, and was imprisoned in a German prisoner of war camp from 1942 to 1945, after being shot down in Avro Manchester R5840 of No.106 Squadron based at Coningsby, all seven airmen of the crew being taken Prisoner of War. Radio Dotrice was the voice of "Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Gregory Pitkin" in the early episodes of BBC Radio's long-running comedy The Men from the Ministry. He was succeeded by Ronald Baddiley in the role. He also played the caretaker Ramsay alongside Patricia Hayes in the Radio 2 sitcom Know Your Place. Theatre Roy Dotrice was a distinguished member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the early 1960s played a variety of roles, including Caliban in The Tempest, opposite Tom Fleming's Propero (dir: Peter Brook) John of Gaunt and Hotspur opposite David Warner's Richard II, and Justice Shallow opposite Hugh Griffith as Falstaff in Henry IV, and then Edward IV in the Hall/Barton adapted Shakespeare cycle The Wars of the Roses, later broadcast by the BBC. Dotrice played the part of John Aubrey in Brief Lives, a one-man play devised and directed by Patrick Garland that saw Dotrice hold the stage for more than two-and-a-half hours (including the interval, during which he would feign sleep). Premiering in 1967 at the Hampstead Theatre in London, the play later toured England, before two successful productions on Broadway. In 1968 it moved to the Criterion Theatre in the West End, where it ran for 400 performances