Richard Briers: Life, Death, Family and The Good Life

Born: 14 January 1934 · Died: 17 February 2013 · Age at death: 79 · Known for: Tom Good in The Good Life (1975) · Career: Five decades in film, radio, stage and television · Daughter: Lucy Briers (actress)

Eight rows, one pattern: the facts people check — names, dates, the marriage, the daughter — are the anchor points for every question in this article.

What was the cause of Richard Briers’ death?

Briers died on 17 February 2013, aged 79 (BBC News obituary). The cause listed in Wikipedia’s biographical entry is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a category that covers several progressive lung conditions.

The BBC’s reporting focused on emphysema, a form of chronic lung disease that Briers himself had publicly linked to a 50-year smoking habit (BBC News). That public link is what separates the medical record from the gossip.

The takeaway: the public record is more specific than the original reports suggested, but the specifics come from compiled biographies rather than a single medical statement.

Was Richard Briers a smoker?

Yes, according to the BBC’s obituary: Briers had emphysema and had publicly linked it to a 50-year smoking habit (BBC News).

• Diagnosed with emphysema in 2007, according to Wikipedia’s biographical account (Wikipedia).
• Stopped smoking in 2001 after a routine chest X-ray warned of future mobility problems, per the same account (Wikipedia).

The pattern is consistent: five decades of smoking, a late quit date, and a lung disease that eventually killed him.

Did Felicity Kendal and Richard Briers get along?

The confirmed record is professional. Felicity Kendal played Barbara Good opposite Briers’s Tom Good in The Good Life (BBC’s Good Life archive), and the two were the on-screen married couple at the centre of the sitcom (BBC News).

• On-screen relationship: Tom and Barbara, a married couple trying self-sufficiency in suburban Surbiton (BBC News).
• Off-screen relationship: no interviewed statement in the reviewed sources confirms a close friendship or a falling-out.

That silence is itself an answer: the reliable sources describe the work, not the warmth.

Did Felicity Kendal go to Richard Briers’ funeral?

• Funeral attendance: not confirmed in any source reviewed for this article.
• Published tributes from Kendal at the time: not captured in the reviewed sources.

If a tabloid claim about her attendance exists, it is not part of the record used here.

Did Penelope Keith get on with Richard Briers?

• Penelope Keith played Margo Leadbetter, the sharp-tongued neighbour in The Good Life (BBC’s Good Life archive).
• No reviewed interview or memoir confirms a private friendship or feud with Briers.

The on-screen friction was scripted; the off-screen verdict stays undocumented.

The pattern: the more personal the question, the thinner the sources get. Public roles are verifiable; private relationships are not part of the archive.

Who is Richard Briers’ famous daughter?

Richard Briers was married to actress Ann Davies (BBC News). The couple had two daughters, one of them Lucy Briers, who is also an actress (Wikipedia).

Is Lucy Briers related to Richard Briers?

• Yes — Lucy Briers is one of Richard Briers’s two daughters (Wikipedia).

The question appears in search because people hear the surname and want the connection confirmed. It is direct: father and daughter.

Is Lucy Briers married?

• Marital status: not documented in the sources reviewed for this article.

Without a published profile or interview confirming a spouse, the accurate answer is unconfirmed.

Who was Richard Briers married to?

• Ann Davies, an actress, was his wife (BBC News).

The marriage is one of the stable facts in every obituary reviewed here.

The implication: the family questions cluster around Lucy because she keeps the Briers name visible in acting credits, while her father’s fame still dominates the search results.

Were Richard Briers and Paul Eddington friends?

Paul Eddington played Jerry Leadbetter in The Good Life (BBC’s Good Life archive), and the two actors later reunited for Ever Decreasing Circles (Wikipedia).

• Good Life roles: Tom Good and Jerry Leadbetter, neighbours with very different attitudes to self-sufficiency (BBC archive).
• Second collaboration: Ever Decreasing Circles (Wikipedia).
• Private friendship: not documented in the reviewed sources.

The professional partnership is easy to verify; the personal bond is not.

Why this matters: people ask about the friendship because the two men shared a rare comic rhythm across two sitcoms. What the record confirms is the rhythm, not the friendship.

Are any of The Good Life actors still alive?

Yes — two of the four leads have no recorded death in the sources reviewed. Richard Briers died on 17 February 2013 (BBC News), and Paul Eddington died in 1995 (Wikipedia). Felicity Kendal and Penelope Keith have no recorded death in any source reviewed here.

• The Good Life comprised four series and 30 episodes (British Comedy Guide).
• The original BBC run lasted from 1975 to 1978 (BBC archive).

How old was Richard Briers when he was in The Good Life?

• Briers was 41 when The Good Life began in 1975 — from a 1934 birth to a 1975 first series (BBC News).

That age is part of the show’s point: Tom Good is a man starting over in mid-life, and Briers played him at exactly that stage.

According to the BBC’s obituary, the final episode was filmed in front of Queen Elizabeth II in 1978 (BBC News). The pattern: “still alive” searches are really a way of asking how much of the show’s world is still reachable — the episodes are reachable, two of the four leads are not.

How The Good Life’s four leads compare

Four leads, one split: the two male actors have confirmed deaths, while the two female leads have no recorded death in the reviewed sources.

The split is the story: the central couple, Tom and Barbara, are divided between a confirmed death and an actress with no recorded death in the reviewed sources — which is exactly why the “still alive” question keeps resurfacing.

Key dates in Richard Briers’ life

• 14 January 1934 — Born Richard David Briers in Merton, Surrey (Wikipedia biography).
• 1959 — West End debut in Gilt and Gingerbread (BBC News).
• 1975 — Began starring as Tom Good in The Good Life (BBC archive).
• 1978 — The Good Life ended its original BBC run (BBC archive).
• 2003 — Appeared in the film Peter Pan (Wikipedia).
• 17 February 2013 — Died at 79 after a life in British comedy (BBC News).

The arc: a 1950s stage start, one defining sitcom in the 1970s, then royal honours — OBE in 1989, CBE in 2003 (BBC News obituary) — and a death that still draws search traffic more than a decade later.

Confirmed facts vs what remains unclear

Confirmed facts

• Briers died on 17 February 2013, aged 79 (BBC News).
• He was born on 14 January 1934 (Wikipedia).
• He was married to actress Ann Davies (BBC News).
• He publicly linked his emphysema to a 50-year smoking habit (BBC News).
• The Good Life ran from 1975 to 1978 (BBC archive).

Still unclear or unconfirmed

• The COPD diagnosis appears in Wikipedia’s biographical coverage, not in an official medical statement reviewed here (Wikipedia).
• Whether Felicity Kendal attended Briers’s funeral: unconfirmed.
• Off-screen closeness between Briers and his co-stars: not documented in the reviewed sources.
• Lucy Briers’s current marital status: unconfirmed.
• The 2001 quit date and the 2007 diagnosis rest on Wikipedia’s biographical account (Wikipedia).

The balance is the finding: birth, marriage, the sitcom and the death are settled. The medical specifics and the relationship gossip are open — cite them as biographical accounts, or not at all.

Key voices on Briers’s life and death

Briers died aged 79 on 17 February 2013.

BBC News obituary, on his death

An English actor whose five-decade career encompassed film, radio, stage and television.

Wikipedia biography, career overview

The Good Life comprised four series and 30 episodes.

British Comedy Guide’s programme records

Together these three records explain the search pattern: a death notice, a career summary, and a production ledger. None of them answers the relationship questions — which is why those questions remain open.

The takeaway

Briers’s story is unusual in British comedy because the man and the role refuse to separate: Tom Good made Briers famous, and Briers made Tom Good lovable. For fans of The Good Life, the practical consequence is simple — the 30 episodes survive (British Comedy Guide), the four leads are split between two confirmed deaths and two actresses with no recorded death, and the show’s living thread is still held by the people who made it. For anyone researching Briers today, the choice is clear: cite the confirmed dates and named roles, or repeat the kind of speculation the obituaries never verified.

Frequently asked questions

The pattern from the rest of the article holds here too: the credits are documented, while the personal details are not.

Related reading

Two more British comedy lives, told from the same fact-checked angle:

• Ian Lavender: Dad’s Army’s Private Pike Dies at 77
• Charles Hawtrey: Biography, Carry On Films, and Personal Life

Both biographies sit in the same British sitcom lineage that Briers helped define.