Richard David Briers, CBE (14th January 1934 - 17th February 2013) was an English actor. Prominent for half a century, his career encompassed television, stage, film and radio performances. Briers first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade, when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life (1975-78), that he became a household name. In the 1980s he starred in Ever Decreasing Circles (1984-89), and he had a leading role in Monarch of the Glen (2000-02).