On This Day... 31st July

Today we remember Beatrix Lehmann, who passed away on this date in 1979, aged 76.

One of her final performances was as Professor Amelia Rumford in The Stones of Blood. This story was the 100th broadcast, and fell around the time of the programme's 15th Anniversary.

Lehmann was adored by Tom Baker, and particularly hit it off with John Leeson, who voiced K9. On learning that he was a keen photographer (he took publicity shots of actors for the Spotlight directory as a side-line to his own acting work), she gifted him a vintage Leica camera.

Lehmann is one of two people to whom Christopher Isherwood dedicated his Goodbye to Berlin - one of the books which would later form the basis for the musical Cabaret. In the novel, Sally Bowles is a young English woman, rather than an American, as she was based on Lehmann.

Lehmann had one other brush with Doctor Who, though no-one would have known it at the time. In 1967 she appeared in an episode of BBC sci-fi anthology series Out of the Unknown in an adaptation of an Isaac Asimov story. This was broadcast as "The Prophet". It featured robots which would later be repainted and used as the White Robots in The Mind Robber.

The Scots actor Robert James also died on this date, in 2004 aged 80. He played Hieronymous' priest of Demnos colleague in The Masque of Mandragora, but Doctor Who fans will remember him best as the scientist Lesterson in Power of the Daleks.