My mother, Patricia Garwood, who has died aged 78, was a much-loved actor, best known for playing Beryl Crabtree in the 1980s BBC sitcom No Place Like Home.

Among her many other credits were The Victorians (1963), Within These Walls (1975) and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (1989).

Born in Paignton, Devon, Patricia was the daughter of Phyllis (nee Dean), an audiologist, and Joe Garwood, an advertising executive. When Pat was six her family moved to Ealing in west London. She was accepted to study ballet at the Arts Educational school in central London, and in her first term, aged nine, was given a small part in the classic Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).

After that she never looked back: in 1955 alone she played George in The Famous Five at the Prince’s theatre in the West End, had a leading role in the children’s television series Benbow and the Angels, and also featured in the TV film Passage of Arms.

After graduating from Rada in 1959 she played Wendy to Julia Lockwood’s Peter Pan at the Scala theatre in London. One night, in the bar after the show, she met the writer Jeremy Paul, and they fell in love. She was 18; he was 20 and had just decided to leave Oxford University as he had been offered a three-year television writing contract with ATV.

They married in 1960 and settled in Richmond, Surrey, where they co-founded, in 1971, the Orange Tree theatre with old friends, Sam Walters and Auriol Smith. At the same time as appearing in many plays there and bringing up four daughters, Pat carved out a successful television career as an actor.

In 1999 Pat and Jeremy moved to Swanage in Dorset. After Jeremy died in 2011, she came out of retirement to play occasional parts at the Lighthouse theatre in Poole, including Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit (2013) and Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Ernest (2014).

In 2014, she published her first novel, Keyne Island, a Victorian adventure set on a remote Cornish island. This was followed by Walnuts (2015), a modern-day tale of love and families, and then Best Way Out (2016), set in a near future where assisted death is a legal right to anyone over the age of 75. Her psychological thriller Through a Crack in the Door was published earlier this year.

Pat was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in April 2018 and decided against treatment, choosing to let nature take its course.

She is survived by her daughters, Tara, Sasha, Sophie and me, and 10 grandchildren.