Lalla Ward

Lalla Ward
Other names:	The Honourable Sarah Ward
Birth date:	28 June 1951
Work in the DWU
Main roles:	Romana II, Astra of Atrios
IMDb profile
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Lalla Ward (born Sarah Ward on 28 June 1951) played first Princess Astra in The Armageddon Factor and then the part of Romana, taking over from Mary Tamm, from Destiny of the Daleks to Warriors' Gate. She is also a noted illustrator and audio book narrator and the former wife of Fourth Doctor actor, Tom Baker

Genealogy

Lalla is the daughter of Edward Ward, the 7th Viscount Bangor, and his fourth wife, Marjorie Alice Banks. She has a brother, Edward Nicholas Ward, two years her junior, and a half-brother, William Maxwell David Ward, who is three years her senior and the 8th Viscount Bangor. Lalla Ward is herself more properly addressed as the Honourable Sarah Ward.

She is descended from George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV, via John Mordaunt, 1st Earl of Peterborough, John, 1st Viscount Mordaunt, and Bernard Ward, 1st Viscount Bangor.

Acting

She attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Her stage name, "Lalla," comes from her attempts as a toddler to pronounce her own name. She began her acting career in the Hammer horror film Vampire Circus, and played the teenage daughter of The Duchess of Duke Street in the popular BBC drama series of the 1970s. In 1980, she played Ophelia to Derek Jacobi's Hamlet in the BBC television production. She was the second actress to play the Time Lady Romana. She was chosen to replace Mary Tamm in the part, after a guest appearance in another role in the Doctor Who story The Armageddon Factor in 1979.

Marriages

Following her exit from the series in 1981, she married her co-star, actor Tom Baker, that December, but the marriage lasted only sixteen months. (Once, when asked what her favourite monster on Doctor Who was, she quipped, "Tom Baker.")

Later, Douglas Adams, who had worked with her on Doctor Who, introduced her to his friend Richard Dawkins, biologist and author of such books as The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, whom he had met after Dawkins sent him a fan letter. They met at Adams' fortieth birthday party in 1992 and married the same year.[1] They then separated in 2016.

Other work

Ward illustrates Dawkins' books. She also wrote two books on knitting in the 1980s, and one on embroidery (in one of these books, Louise Jameson models some of Ward's creations). She created the 1985 Shell Calendar, with embroidered pictures of sea birds.

Ward has seldom appeared on screen since her marriage to Dawkins. However, she has reprised the character of Romana in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time, the 2003 webcast version of Shada, and in several Doctor Who, Gallifrey audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions and also a pair of audio dramas under the Adventures in a Pocket Universe title produced by BBV Productions. She has also recorded audio books, including Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct and Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and The Greatest Show on Earth.

Asteroid 8347 Lallaward is named after her.

In the DWU

Lalla Ward is mentioned as being one of the guests at a party in the novel The Dying Days.

Credits

Television

Doctor Who

• The Armageddon Factor (as Princess Astra)
• Destiny of the Daleks
• City of Death
• The Creature from the Pit
• Nightmare of Eden
• The Horns of Nimon
• Shada
• The Leisure Hive
• Meglos
• Full Circle
• State of Decay
• Warriors' Gate

Mini-episodes

• Dimensions in Time

Webcast

• Shada

Direct-to-video

• Shada: DVD release

Audio dramas

Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories

• The Apocalypse Element
• Neverland
• Zagreus
• Shada
• The Beautiful People
• The Chaos Pool (also as Princess Astra)
• The Pyralis Effect
• The Invasion of E-Space
• Babblesphere
• Luna Romana
• Second Sight
• The Romance of Crime
• The English Way of Death
• The Well-Mannered War
• Wave of Destruction
• The Labyrinth of Buda Castle
• The Paradox Planet / Legacy of Death
• Gallery of Ghouls
• The Trouble with Drax
• The Pursuit of History / Casualties of Time
• The Beast of Kravenos
• The Eternal Battle
• The Silent Scream
• Dethras
• The Haunting of Malkin Place
• Subterranea
• The Movellan Grave
• Night of the Vashta Nerada
• The Skin of the Sleek / The Thief Who Stole Time

Gallifrey

• Weapon of Choice
• Square One
• The Inquiry
• A Blind Eye
• Lies
• Spirit
• Pandora
• Insurgency
• Imperiatrix
• Fractures
• Warfare
• Appropriation
• Mindbomb
• Panacea
• Reborn
• Disassembled
• Annihilation
• Forever
• Emancipation
• Evolution
• Arbitration
• Extermination
• Renaissance
• Ascension
• Enemy Lines
• Celestial Intervention
• Soldier Obscura
• The Devil You Know
• Desperate Measures

Audiobooks

• Shada
• Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive
• City of Death

Documentary

• Defining Shadows
• A Matter of Time
• The Vampire Lovers
• The Dreaming
• Lalla's Wardrobe
• All Aboard the Starliner

Other

• Prime Computer advertisement
• The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot

External links

• Lalla Ward at the Internet Movie Database