Call the Midwife star Jenny Agutter’s husband, Johan Tham, has died at the age of 81 following a battle with cancer. The Times revealed the Swedish property entrepreneur and hotelier, who restored the Grade I listed property Cliveden House to its former glory as one of the most luxurious hotels in Britain, passed away on November 17. Tham and Agutter, who is best known for her roles in The Railway Children and An American Werewolf in London, tied the knot back in August 1990.
The couple walked down the aisle a little more than a year after they met by chance at the Bath Literary Arts Festival. Their son Jonathan, their only child, was born months later in December. The happy couple opened up about their marriage with the Daily Mail back in 2023, where the actress admitted her husband had no idea who she was when they first met.
She told the outlet: “One of the things about meeting people and forming relationships as an actor is that others have an idea of who you are before they meet you. That’s hard in any relationship, particularly with men.
“When Johan and I met, I did not feel he had any sense of who I was at all, but he wanted to find out, and that made a big difference. I’m still dinfing out about him 31 years on.” Johan was born in Nykoping, Sweden, in 1944 to parents Vollrath Tham, an international timber importer, and housewife Maja.
He lived in his home country until the age of four, when the family made the decision to relocate to England with his older sister, Christina, and twin brothers, Sebastian and Peter, in tow.
After emigrating to the UK, he was educated at Heatherdown and boarded at Charterhouse public school before going on to study law at university, a pursuit he later abandoned after graduating. Tham went on to develop a keen interest in property and business.
Some of his early management roles included positions at a funeral home and a petrol station, before he found his calling. In 1987, Tham and business partner John Lewis invested in property together when they purchased Bath’s historic Royal Crescent, which was little more than a boarding house at the time.
They enlisted architect William Bertram to transform it into a luxury hotel. However, Cliveden House would prove to be their most significant project, and with the National Trust, they were eager to restore a venue that had once housed the likes of Sir Winston Churchill.
He was also a devoted family man. Tham raised two stepchildren and a daughter, Johanna, who now works as a special needs teacher, with their first wife Anna Lallerstedt before their divorce in 1989.
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