'As deaths go, I know my father's was a good one. Even in the darkness of our grief at parting, his smile brought flashes of light: Bryan Forbes' daughter gives an intimate account of his last hours, 
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Bryan Forbes, the creater of the film The Stepford Wives and Whistle Down The Wind, died on Wednesday, surrounded by friends and family. His daughter EMMA FORBES describes his life and final hours.
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My father, Bryan Forbes, died on Wednesday, on a day of bright spring sunshine when the shrubs and flowers in the wonderful garden he created were at their loveliest. Swags of purple wisteria, lilac and hyacinth scented the air, and his magnolia — nurtured from a tiny sapling — was in full, glorious bloom.

We managed to bring his garden into the house, too, picking perfumed blooms that stood in pots around him.

Scented candles were lit. Daddy’s favourite arias from Puccini’s La Boheme played and, before he slipped away, my sister Sarah sat at his side and read three chapters from his favourite novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night. There were moments of humour, too, even at this saddest of partings.

One of a kind: Bryan, pictured with his wife Nanette Newman, was married to the mother of his children for 58 years before he passed away

We all called Daddy ‘Baba’. It was a nickname he acquired when the first of his five grandchildren, India, arrived 28 years ago and it stuck.

And when my 16-year-old daughter Lily held his hand for the last time, he squeezed it, smiled and said: ‘Well, Lil, when are we going clubbing?’ It was typical of his humour. Even in the darkness of our grief there were flashes of such light. As deaths go, I know Baba’s was a good one. The whole family had said their fond goodbyes.

My father, who was 86 and had been ill with heart problems and emphysema for several years, knew that the love we felt for him was unquantifiable. We are a theatrical family and we never wasted an opportunity to tell him how much we adored him. And we meant it, absolutely.

Although my father was a RADA-trained actor before his distinguished career as a film director, and also an author and passionate bibliophile — there was not a cranny in our family home in Virginia Water, Surrey, that was not crammed with books — to his family, he was just the best father, grandfather and husband in the world.

Bryan, with his daughter Emma Forbes, who said to his family, he was just the best father, grandfather and husband in the world

He was celebrated for his work: most people remember him best as the creater of the film The Stepford Wives, although his favourite was Whistle Down The Wind, made in 1961.

In 2004, he was awarded a CBE for services to the arts and the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. But when he was asked last June by an interviewer from this paper how he would like to be remembered, he replied as someone ‘not taken in by fame’.

His self-assessment was apposite. He was never grand.

How best to describe him? Despite his many talents, he was unassuming, thoughtful and incredibly kind; not just to his many showbiz friends, the closest of whom — among them Roger Moore, Michael Caine and Richard Attenborough — had been pals since the start of their careers six decades ago, but to every passing acquaintance.

And his warmth and humour touched so many lives. Our postman said: ‘He had a smile for everyone,’ and one of his nurses remarked that she had never met anyone who made her laugh as much.

The greatest and most enduring love of his life was, of course, my mother, actress Nanette Newman.

Veteran actor and director, Bryan Forbes, 78, after he collected his CBE for services to the Arts and the National Youth Theatre. He was accompanied by his wife, actress Nanette Newman, and daughters, actress Emma (right) and journalist Sarah

It is rare today — and even more so in celebrity circles — to have a marriage that lasts for almost 60 years, but my parents’ did, and it was the happiest and most affectionate of unions.

My mother is a great beauty and Daddy never failed to remind her how lovely she looked. He would notice what she wore, the subtlest change in her hairstyle was remarked upon and his pride in her was unfailing. ‘You look beautiful today!’ he would regularly exclaim.

Mummy is, of course, utterly heartbroken. After 58 years of marriage, there is now a gaping hole in her life that cannot be filled.

But as we are all so close, we are surrounding her with love. We’re cooking for her and spending time reflecting on happy memories. We are trying to take all the responsibility from her shoulders and wrapping her in our love.

We spent so much time hugging Daddy during his illness. Now it is Mummy’s turn.

Bryan Forbes with wife Nanette Newman and their daughter Sarah in 1960. The married were couple were 'always as one'

Indeed, Mummy and Daddy were always as one. Their home, in which they had lived since they married in 1955, was their haven and the place they liked to be best of all, because their professional lives had been peripatetic.

My father’s work took him all over the world — and Mummy quite often starred in his films — but he always ensured there was a clause in his contract that stipulated if he had to be away for more than a fortnight, all the family would go with him. And so we did.

Sarah remembers being in Hollywood with our parents not long before I was born in 1965, when Daddy was directing King Rat with George Segal and James Fox. She went to school there, and her infant memory of wandering round a vast film set, a mocked-up World War II Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, is one of her earliest.

When I was ten, we decamped for 18 months to Connecticut for the filming of The Stepford Wives. Mummy played a character whose repetition of the line ‘I’ll just die if I don’t get that recipe!’ became a leitmotif of the film; rather fittingly, because she is the most fabulous cook and generous hostess.

The New England summer was long and sweltering that year. My father and his crew eventually capitulated to the heat, abandoned their clothes and filmed while dressed only in swimming trunks.

Bryan's wife Nanette Newman, seen here in The Stepford Wives, quite often starred in his films

To Sarah and me, film sets became our milieu and the cast of actors that peopled them an extended family. We did not realise, I think, quite how blessed we were to be afforded privileged access to these people and places.

Even so, when I was six or seven and Daddy’s friend and our then neighbour Elton John invited us to stay with him and his band in Malibu — and go to his concert at the Hollywood Bowl — I do recall being mildly awe-struck.

But the memories that abide are simple, domestic ones.

There were summer Sunday lunches on the terrace in our garden when we would sit round a vast table under the dappled shade of willow trees, with Daddy’s old friends laughing uproariously at some shared reminiscence.

We have a family joke that Mummy is incapable of cooking for fewer than 20 people, and she would emerge from the kitchen, casually dressed yet elegant, carrying vast plates of delicious food. Lunch would segue seamlessly into tea when more heavily laden plates would arrive with a fresh wave of guests. Daddy loved to entertain and he had a consummate gift for it.

His work took him all over the world ¿ but Forbes always ensured there was a clause in his contract that stipulated if he had to be away for more than a fortnight, all the family would go with him

RADA-trained Bryan Forbes, playing the part of Pilot Officer Greeno in the film 'Appointment in London' in 1953, was also an author and passionate bibliophile

He was a great raconteur and he could turn a trip to the garage into an adventure of epic and hilarious proportions.

When we were little he would make up bedtime stories for us. Our favourite featured an outrageously naughty French cat who foraged in the Paris bins.

Daddy improvised the story — every evening there would be a fresh chapter of adventures — and told it with a gloriously exaggerated Gallic accent. Sarah and I were always desperate for the next instalment.

He imbued us both with a love of books, too. Sarah, in particular, inherited his gift for writing — she is a journalist — and we both cherish memories of the bookshop Daddy owned in our Surrey village.

Most Saturdays he would potter off there to chat to customers and order books for them; they, in turn, valued the personal service he gave them.

My father had a great reverence for books. He loved the fusty smell of old, leather-bound volumes and handled the books in his own vast library like treasured relics.

Pictured in 1970 with his wife actress Nanette Newman, he said last year that he would like to be remembered, as someone 'not taken in by fame'

Nothing irked him more than the mistreatment of them: he hated to see broken spines, annotations scrawled in margins or the corners of pages turned down to mark a place.

He was also a passionate advocate of independent book shops like his own, and was, of course, irredeemably Luddite about the rise of the Kindle and other e-readers.

He could not fathom why anyone would prefer to read on a screen when they could savour the pleasure of holding a book and turning its pages.

Indeed, both he and Mummy resolutely refused to embrace new technology. Daddy was utterly bemused by Twitter.

He could not understand why anyone would want to tweet an inane paragraph of 140 characters when they could pen an elegantly hand-written letter.

Daddy wrote to Sarah and me, in his meticulously neat script, to mark every special occasion in our lives. I will always keep his letters — I have a treasured stack of them — and I am thankful for the memories invested in them.

Email and text are ephemeral and Daddy never used them or had any desire to do so.

Neither did he use the mobile we bought him. It was the most basic model, the Fisher Price of phones, with huge numbers and no fancy apps.

Despite his many talents, Forbes was 'was unassuming, thoughtful and incredibly kind; not just to his many showbiz friends, but to every passing acquaintance'

But Daddy only had two numbers stored in his, mine and Sarah’s, and he never switched it on, which defeated the object of it.

Even so, rarely a day went by when Sarah and I did not phone him, and a day seldom passed when we did not tell him how much we loved him, either.

We are an effusive family and we’re glad that we never missed an opportunity to say how much we meant to each other.

And words, whether spoken or written, remained Daddy’s lifeblood: he wrote his final novel, The Soldier’s Story, only last year.

But his decline into illness had been steady, and as his health ebbed, Mummy and he remained hermetically sealed, and irrevocably together, in the shared world of their beloved home.

In January last year, the British Film Institute awarded my father its highest honour: The Fellowship. Sadly, he was too poorly to attend the presentation ceremony, but Sarah and I went instead to accept award on his behalf.

The great and the good were there to make their tributes, but the one that stands out in my mind was an informal accolade from an actor, no longer in the profession, who had a small part in Whistle Down The Wind — he played Raymond, the village bully.

‘I wanted to come tonight because your dad was lovely to me all those years ago. So please tell him I love him and I’ll remember him for ever,’ he told me.

Such fond recollections will live in my memory. Even now I cry when I think of them, but they do much to assuage my grief at the death of the most beloved of fathers.

To the last, he was good-humoured and jokey.

Despite his ailing health, he recorded a message to the BFI, expressing his regrets at his absence and his delight at the award: ‘As my friend Bette Davies told me, “Old age ain’t no place for sissies.” ’