Irina von Meyendorff

Born: 6 June, 1916, in Germany Died: 28 September, 2001, in Hampshire, aged 85

IRINA von Meyendorff had a meteoric film career in the Thirties in the heavily controlled German cinema industry. She was one of the stars favoured by the Nazi hierarchy - and courted by many of them - and played leading roles in some important films of the era.

Meyendorff had a luminous beauty - with large, melting eyes - which the camera loved. After a hazardous post-war period she fell in love with the actor James Robertson Justice and lived with him in his imposing home on a promontory overlooking the Dornoch Firth.

After many happy years together, Justice experienced both ill health and financial problems, but Meyendorff nursed him with much loving care until he died.

Baroness Irina (born Irene) Isabella Margarete Paulina Caecilia von Meyendorff was born into an old Estonian family who escaped to Berlin after the Russian Revolution.

Her beauty and exuberant personality helped her get small parts in films ("I was considered," she commented years later, "the image of the ideal German woman: pretty, kind, stupid and faithful"). She carved a successful career for herself in both films and stage plays.

She was undoubtedly well thought of by senior Nazis (Hermann Goering often danced attendance) but her family was related to the von Stauffenbergs, who had led the unsuccessful attempt to liquidate Hitler in 1943. This tarnished Meyendorff’s standing and her workload diminished. It did not, however, reduce her popularity and she remained something of the Forces Sweetheart - many soldiers had a snap of Meyendorff in their haversack.

After a succession of rather forgettable movies, Meyendorff came to Britain to play a small part in Very Important Person. On the set she met the bearded, and equally exuberant, Scottish actor James Robertson Justice. He had become very popular in films playing irascible doctors: especially memorable was the cantankerous Sir Lancelot Spratt in Doctor in the House in 1954.

Justice and Meyendorff formed a bond: she speaking in her good but heavily accented English and he in a somewhat arcane but quaint German.

These two larger than life characters had much in common founded on their joint love of nature and wild life. "James," Meyendorff admitted, "gave me freedom. With him I never had to hide anything." As if to celebrate that freedom, Meyendorff, in 1962, left her third husband and travelled north to live with Justice in his picturesque house at Spinningdale in Sutherland.

Justice had created and extended the property a decade earlier so that he could indulge his great love of falconry and the outdoors. The two shared a devotion to the countryside and Meyendorff spent many hours photographing the bird life and animals throughout Caithness and Sutherland.

The two delighted in leading a relaxed, decidedly informal, existence. The house became a meeting place for like-minded lovers of the outdoors with a smattering of royals (including the then Prince Phillip and Prince Charles) and film stars from London. Into this social cocktail, Justice and Meyendorff introduced various passionate ornithologists and wildlife experts who came to explore the area. Their mutual love, and fascination in, falconry was a central focus for many of their happiest years in Sutherland.

In 1967, Meyendorff became a British subject, but it was about then that Justice had his first, of several, strokes. This resulted in fewer film roles coming his way, yet he still had to bear the considerable overheads at Spinningdale. Under fraught circumstances - Justice was declared bankrupt in 1972 - she nursed him until his death in 1975.

Meyendorff had to face a new life: once again on her own and penniless, she moved south to Wiltshire and gave foreign-language lessons to make ends meet. In 1983, she married the naturalist Toby Bromley, who survives her.