How did a Yorkshire schoolboy become Captain Picard?

Patrick Stewart grew up in Mirfield, in Yorkshire, where a schoolteacher introduced him to Shakespeare and encouraged him to act. He left school at fifteen and worked as a reporter on a local paper, but the stage kept pulling him back, and he trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, and in 1987 he took command of the Enterprise as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, a role he held for seven seasons.

He died at home in Los Angeles, aged 86, with his wife Sunny beside him, as his family said.