Actress Pat Kirkwood, the last survivor from the golden age of the pre-war British musicals, has died in Ilkley aged 86.

During a career spanning more than 60 years she starred in leading roles in musicals written by Noel Coward, Cole Porter and Leonard Bernstein.

But it was her friendship with the Duke of Edinburgh that kept her name in the public consciousness.

Kirkwood died on Christmas Day at Kitwood House nursing home in Ilkley, the author and royal biographer Michael Thornton, a close family friend, said.

For more than half a century Kirkwood's name was linked by the media, and by royal biographers, with that of Prince Philip.

In October 1948, the Duke was introduced to Kirkwood in the star's London Hippodrome dressing room.

The Duke, Kirkwood and her then boyfriend went on to dine at Les Ambassadeurs restaurant in Mayfair. Afterwards Kirkwood and the Duke were seen dancing together for several hours at the Milroy nightclub.

At the time, Princess Elizabeth was eight months pregnant with the Prince of Wales, and worldwide media speculation about a relationship between the pair continued for decades afterwards.

In May 1954, Kirkwood became the first female star on British television to have her own one-hour series, The Pat Kirkwood Show, and in July of that year she made her Las Vegas cabaret debut at the Desert Inn in her own show, London Palladium Varieties, which broke all box-office records during its three-month season.

In 1976, her performance in a revival of Pal Joey at the Edinburgh Festival was received with critical acclaim.

Kirkwood married four times, lastly to retired lawyer Peter Knight, a former president of the Bradford and Bingley Building Society. They wed in 1981 and settled in Bingley.