Lalla Ward

Lalla Ward (born Sarah Ward, 28 June 1951) played first Princess Astra in The Armageddon Factor and then the part of Romana, taking over from Mary Tamm, from Destiny of the Daleks to Warriors' Gate. She is also a noted illustrator and audio book narrator.

Genealogy
Lalla is the daughter of Edward Ward, the 7th, and his fourth wife, Marjorie Alice Banks. She has a brother, Edward Nicholas Ward, two years her junior, and a half-brother, William Maxwell David Ward, who is three years her senior and the 8th Viscount Bangor. Lalla Ward is herself more properly addressed as the Honourable Sarah Ward.

She is descended from, brother of , via , , and.

Acting
She attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Her stage name, "Lalla," comes from her attempts as a toddler to pronounce her own name. She began her acting career in the film, and played the teenage daughter of  in the popular BBC drama series of the 1970s. In 1980, she played Ophelia to Derek Jacobi's Hamlet in the BBC television production. She was the second actress to play the Time Lady Romana. She was chosen to replace Mary Tamm in the part, after a guest appearance in another role in the Doctor Who story The Armageddon Factor in 1979.

Marriages
Following her exit from the series in 1981, she married her co-star, actor Tom Baker, that December, but the marriage lasted only sixteen months. (Once, when asked what her favourite monster on Doctor Who was, she quipped, "Tom Baker.") Douglas Adams, who had worked with her on Doctor Who, introduced her to his friend Richard Dawkins, biologist and author of such books as and, whom he had met after Dawkins sent him a fan letter. They met at Adams' fortieth birthday party in 1992 and married the same year. She illustrates his books and also wrote two books on in the 1980s, and one on embroidery (in one of these books, Louise Jameson models some of Ward's creations). She created the 1985 Shell Calendar, with embroidered pictures of sea birds.

Ward has seldom appeared on screen since her marriage to Dawkins. However, she has reprised the character of Romana in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time, the 2003 webcast version of Shada, and in several Doctor Who, Gallifrey audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions and also a pair of audio dramas under the Adventures in a Pocket Universe title produced by BBV Productions. She has also recorded audio books, including 's and Dawkins', , and.

Trivia

 * is named after her.