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

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

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. For more than half a century her name was linked by the media and 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 to dinner and afterwards the Duke and Kirkwood were seen dancing together at a nightclub. At the time, Princess Elizabeth was eight months pregnant.

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.