Call the Midwife star Jenny Agutter's husband Johan Tham dead at 81
It has been announced that Call the Midwife actress Jenny Agutter's husband, Johan Tham, has died at the age of 81.
Jenny Agutter's husband Johan Tham has died at the age of 81.
According to The Times, the property entrepreneur and hotelier -responsible for transforming Cliveden House, Buckinghamshire, into one of Britain's most lavish hotels - passed away on November 17 following a battle with cancer.
Johan - who was managing director of Cliveden - met Call the Midwife star Jenny, 73, at the Bath Literary Arts Festival in 1989.
He knew nothing about Jenny when they first crossed paths, and it was Johan's interest in her that charmed the An American Werewolf in London actress.
In 2023, she told the Daily Mail: "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 finding out about him 31 years on."
In August 1990, Jenny and Johan got married at Cliveden.
Four months after their nuptials, they welcomed their son - and only child - Jonathan, 35, into the world. He works as a general practitioner (GP) in London.
In December 2024, Jenny recalled the dramatic birth of Jonathan - who was born five weeks early on Christmas Day - of which the pain mystified her whilst she was away with family in Oxfordshire in 1990.
The star - who said Christmas Day is more about celebrating her and Johan's son's special day - recalled to Yours magazine: "I woke up feeling uncomfortable, so I called my obstetrician and he asked me whether I was in labour.
"I said, 'I didn’t know because I hadn’t experienced it before and wasn’t expecting him yet.'
"He said, 'You’d better come in, and I’ll see you.'
"I was there all day, and my son arrived very late. It was a long day!"
Johan - who also had two stepchildren and a daughter, Johanna, a special needs teacher, with his first wife Anna Lallerstedt - was born in Nykoping, Sweden, in 1944, to Vollrath Tham, an international timber importer, and Maja, a housewife.
When he was four years old, Johan, his older sister Christina and twin brothers Sebastian and Peter moved to England.
Johan studied at Heatherdown - an independent preparatory school for boys, near Ascot, Berkshire, which taught between 80 and 90 students who were aged between seven and 13 and closed in 1982.
He went on to be boarded at Charterhouse public school, Godalming, Surrey, before he enrolled in a law degree at university.
Johan ditched his legal profession upon graduating and decided to pursue a career in property and business.
Early management roles included a funeral home and a petrol station, and in 1978, he and business partner John Lewis established Blakeney Hotels - named after the fictional Scarlet Pimpernel character Sir Percy Blakeney.
That year, the duo bought Bath's Royal Crescent - a boarding house at the time - and tasked architect William Bertram to convert it into a plush hotel.
Blakeney Hotels' most ambitious undertaking came in 1984 when they took on the Cliveden estate.
The National Trust wanted the venue - which once hosted former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill - to be restored.
As managing director of Cliveden, Johan transformed it into a high-end hotel.
In 2012, Cliveden was bought for £30 million by the 75-year-old billionaire property investor Ian Livingstone.
