Leila and Alfred Hoffman – the UK’s oldest working couple

MEET the Hoffmans – Alfred and Leila, two actors who worked well into their 90s.

Leila lives in Hampstead, while her husband of 63 years died last year. The couple had a rare claim to fame.

When Prince Philip stopped down from official duties in 2017, the Royal Mint decided to award the husband and wife the accolade of the UK’s oldest working couple.

Before Alfred died in May, 2023, he wrote a memoir, and now the book, alongside Leila’s tale of life as an evacuee, is in the shops.

The Hoffmans have written two beautiful, gentle and enlightening stories that not only reveal a moving lifelong love, but share clear and interesting voices from the 20th century.

Leila has been in a wide range of films and TV – EastEnders, Casualty, Not Going Out, One Foot In The Grave and The Witches. Her credits are long and celebrated. Her book consists of the letters she and her sister wrote to their parents while away, and make for moving and sometimes comic reading.

Born in Hackney, her family moved to Worthing when she was a baby.

“Imagine being five years old – happy, carefree, sometimes naughty every day more or less normal, sometimes boring, occasionally exciting and WHAM! Your whole life is changed,” she states.

“That’s what happened to me and thousands of children – and grown-ups, too, of course – when England went to war with Germany in 1939.”

She continues: “If you ask an older person what they remember about that awful day, you will probably get a few different answers.

“I know that some people have this memory of the whole family sitting anxiously in front of the radio… well, actually, it was called the wireless in those days and it was big – like a piece of furniture made of polished wood. My first memory of our wireless must have been when I was about three years old. I was fascinated by the voice booming out at me. I was constantly peeping into the back of it trying to find the man inside.”

The couple as children

She recalls East End friends and relatives leaving Hackney to escape the bombs and staying with them. And then, as the Phoney War ended, the 1941 invasion scare began.

“This meant everyone living in towns along the south coast were considered to be at great risk,” she recalls. “An extraordinary plan was devised to evacuate all children who lived by the sea to places in the country considered to be safer.

“This meant separating the children from their parents. Can you imagine being six years old and going through this trauma?”

Leila and her sister moved to Nottingham, and placed in the care of a Mr and Mrs Farrow, who, she recalls, did all they could to be kind.

Alfred’s story begins in Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1920s. And his vocal command had deep roots in his mother’s insistence he learned a speech from A Midsummer’s Night Dream, as part of daily elocution lessons. She was a keen actor, and encouraged Alfred culturally: from books to theatre, to tap dance lessons, he was raised in an atmosphere of creative enjoyment. At his secondary school, he set up a drama society and put on performances to raise money for the war effort against the Nazis, even performing for the Greek royal family, who fled to South Africa.

His paths crossed those of a young lawyer called Nelson Mandela.

“I was a student at Witwatersrand University. There was no colour bar or racism there. Nelson was a mature student in my class and he worked part-time in a solicitors’ office. I think that set him a bit apart. He didn’t look or behave like a student really. He came to class in a suit and tie. He was very pleasant, but rather quiet.

“How I wish I had made more of an effort to help him blend in so that I could have known him better and become a true friend.”

It was while at university he realised he did not have a future in South Africa.

“I remember a student coming into the law library saying she had seen three Afrikaner policemen marching long the pavement, shoving black men off the kerb, shouting ‘Ons is Bass now’ – we are the boss now – and giving the Hitler salute.”

His thoughts turned to England. After completing his law degree, he set sail for Southampton. He found a bedsit in Hampstead and made his way to the Arts Theatre in Leicester Square to find work. It was here he first set eyes on Leila.

His law degree allowed him to teach between stage and film work, while the Wall’s ice cream factory provided night shifts so he could be free for auditions during the day

He worked with an impressive list of names: from Ralph Richardson and Roger Moore to Susannah York in classics such as Sink The Bismarck and Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth.

His life well lived, alongside Leila’s charming tale, are captured evocatively in these marvellous memoirs.

• You’re A Clever Boy. By Alfred Hoffman, Olympia Publishers, £4.99
• Kickers Back To Front. By Leila Hoffman, Olympia Publishers, £7.99