Lynda Bellingham on her Jewish roots
Actress and presenter Lynda Bellingham, who died on Sunday at the age of 66, once recalled how her adopted mother told her: “We just don’t understand you, I think it’s because you’re Jewish.”
The actress, who passed away after a year-long battle with colon cancer, was born in 1948 in Montreal Canada, as Meredith Lee Hughes.
Bellingham’s Orthodox Jewish mother gave birth to her out of wedlock and was compelled to give her up due to family pressure.
She was adopted by Donald and Ruth Bellingham in Buckinghamshire and described her up-bringing on a farm as ‘idyllic’.
In an interview with the Evening Standard in 2011, Bellingham recalled her adopted mother telling her: “‘We just don’t understand you, I think it’s because you’re Jewish.’ So that was one of the first things I learned about my heritage. My big nose gave me a face that wasn’t pretty but I wasn’t an Ugly Betty. I was in no man’s land.”
After having trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, in London, Bellingham had a highly successful acting career, which spanned five decades.
She was best known for her role as the mother in the Oxo TV advert, drama; All Creatures Great and Small, and more recently, popular daytime TV show Loose Women.
She did track down her birth mother, and had regular conversations, although was said to be devastated at not being invited to her mother’s funeral.
Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community. Today we're asking for your invaluable help to continue putting our community first in everything we do.
For as little as £5 a month you can help sustain the vital work we do in celebrating and standing up for Jewish life in Britain.
Jewish News holds our community together and keeps us connected. Like a synagogue, it’s where people turn to feel part of something bigger. It also proudly shows the rest of Britain the vibrancy and rich culture of modern Jewish life.
You can make a quick and easy one-off or monthly contribution of £5, £10, £20 or any other sum you’re comfortable with.
100% of your donation will help us continue celebrating our community, in all its dynamic diversity...
Engaging
Being a community platform means so much more than producing a newspaper and website. One of our proudest roles is media partnering with our invaluable charities to amplify the outstanding work they do to help us all.
Celebrating
There’s no shortage of oys in the world but Jewish News takes every opportunity to celebrate the joys too, through projects like Night of Heroes, 40 Under 40 and other compelling countdowns that make the community kvell with pride.
Pioneering
In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding.
Campaigning
Royal Mail issued a stamp honouring Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton after a Jewish News campaign attracted more than 100,000 backers. Jewish Newsalso produces special editions of the paper highlighting pressing issues including mental health and Holocaust remembrance.
Easy access
In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people.
Voice of our community to wider society
The Jewish News team regularly appears on TV, radio and on the pages of the national press to comment on stories about the Jewish community. Easy access to the paper on the streets of London also means Jewish News provides an invaluable window into the community for the country at large.
We hope you agree all this is worth preserving.
