Kit Hesketh-Harvey

Kit Hesketh-Harvey, a much-loved performer, composer and screenwriter, has passed away at the age of 65.

He gave and gave and gave." I have a writing room in the former vestry." "It's a magical and unique landscape, with its blond heathlands, twisted pines, dark forests and murmuring waters, which ought to be fiercely defended against depredation."

It has been reported that the musician – known for being half of the musical comedy duo Kit and the Widow alongside pianist Richard Sisson – had cancer. He and ...

Hesketh-Harvey was married to Kate Rabett – the Bond girl and You Rang, M'Lord? One of the sharpest, funniest & kindest men I had the honour to call a friend. Hesketh-Harvey co-starred with Tim Minchin in the first BBC Comedy prom at the Royal Albert Hall in 2011 in what was the last time that Kit and the Widow appeared on stage together. He once adapted The Caribbean Tempest starring Kylie Minogue, in Barbados and Sydney and wrote a show about Monterverdi entitled Monterverdi’s Flying Circus. Kit died unexpectedly but peacefully, listening to Radio 3 and preparing for a Kit & McConnel show tonight.’ He gave and gave and gave.’

Kit Hesketh-Harvey was responsible for the screenplay for 'Maurice' in 1987 with Hugh Grant, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Graves, Simon Callow and Denholm Elliott.

He gave and gave and gave”. Later, he attended Tonbridge School in Kent and Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature and became a member of the Footlights drama club. In addition, Hesketh-Harvey also penned the screenplay for the 1987 James Ivory-directed romance Maurice, starring the fresh faces of Hugh Grant and Ben Kingsley.

Hesketh-Harvey was the brother of journalist and former editor of the Evening Standard Sarah Sands, who is the ex-wife of actor Julian Sands.

Kit left indelible joyous memories for us all and he leaves an unfillable gap in all our lives.” “He joined the agency on it being formed in the late 1980s. Kit died unexpectedly but peacefully, listening to Radio 3 and preparing for a Kit & McConnel show tonight. “And a fine musician. And much more. Our thoughts are with his family.”

He also penned screenplays and libretti, wrote for The Vicar of Dibley and was a witty radio panellist.

The Countess of Carnarvon, a friend of many years, recalled that when at Highclere he parked “Le Van Blanc” (the white van) outside the main door to the castle, while floating down to breakfast in various silk dressing gowns. “It was love across the footlights,” he quipped. They lived between Norfolk, where he used a former church as his office, and a beachfront home near Padstow in Cornwall. He enjoyed listening to Gregorian chant but detested golf, adding: “The only good thing to be said about it is that it keeps all the most depressing people in the kingdom in the same place at one time.” Under the tutelage of Stephen Sondheim, who was on a visiting professorship at Oxford University, he teamed up with James McConnel to write his first musical, Orlando (1988), based on Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel. He was sent to England to be a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral Choir School, describing the experience as “the most brilliant musical training you could possibly have” – even though it was a bizarre upbringing. Off stage, Hesketh-Harvey’s writing, packed with wit and wisdom, suggests a renaissance man, ranging from a tongue-in-cheek “agony uncle” column in Country Life magazine to the libretto for Anthony Bolton’s opera The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko (2021) for Grange Park Opera. “Lloyd George was none too wealthy/ And Welsh; therefore unhealthy,” he recited. For many years he enjoyed appearing in pantomime, usually playing the baddie such as King Rat in a recent Dick Whittington at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, where as a child he had been taken by his grandmother. Their camp and entertaining show invariably worked in a good proportion of topical items, poking fun at institutions and individuals of the day. He later re-emerged with the pianist James McConnel as Kit and McConnel, though the schtick remained largely unchanged. He had met the Widow (Richard Sisson) at Cambridge University, drily informing audiences that they formed their act “during the last war – the Falklands”.