{"id":715802,"date":"2026-07-28T17:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T17:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/715802\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T17:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T17:54:08","slug":"laughter-and-tears-at-dame-penelope-keith-funeral-in-guildford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/715802\/","title":{"rendered":"Laughter and tears at Dame Penelope Keith funeral in Guildford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dame Penelope Keith&#8217;s funeral has been hailed as &#8220;wonderful, beautiful and absolutely amazing&#8221; by her friends.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The actress, who starred in The Good Life and To The Manor Born, &#8220;died peacefully whilst living with cancer at her home&#8221; on 29 June at the age of 86.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Crowds lined the streets to say their goodbyes to the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cn5nyr75570o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">very special lady<\/a>&#8221; as her coffin travelled through her home town of Milford in Surrey before the service at Guildford Cathedral.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Broadcaster, writer and former politician Gyles Brandreth said the funeral was &#8220;filled with a mixture of sadness but laughter and gratitude as well because we were celebrating a great actress&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was a wonderful way to remember a remarkable person,&#8221; he told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/play\/live\/bbc_radio_surrey\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BBC Radio Surrey.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Posting on X later, he said: &#8220;There was laughter and tears at Guildford Cathedral this morning &#8211; a truly beautiful and deeply moving funeral service for Dame Penelope Keith &#8211; what a lady and what a perfect service.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It caught her completely. She was very special.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dame Penelope Keith&#8217;s funeral has been hailed as &#8220;wonderful, beautiful and absolutely amazing&#8221; by her friends. The actress,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-715802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}