John Goodwin obituary

John Goodwin, who has died aged 97, was a theatre public relations man whose skills earned him an influence far beyond the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, with which he was associated for most of his working life.

He was born in London, where his father, Albert Goodwin, worked for the Inland Revenue; his mother was the musical comedy actor Jessie Lonnen, whose father, EJ Lonnen, had also been a star in burlesque, and Johnny was drawn to the theatre from childhood. After second world war service in the Royal Navy, during which he saw action on a destroyer in the North Atlantic, he first joined what was then still the Shakespeare Memorial theatre in Stratford in 1948.

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