This is how I best remember her, as Emma Peel in the Avengers. I wanted to be like her, when I was six.
But she was a brilliant actress in so many roles - the only Bond girl to marry Bond (just a pity it was George Lazenby - and that she died just after the wedding), a nun in In This House of Brede, and Mrs Bradley in The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, for instance.
More recently, she played the villain in the Doctor Who episode The Crimson Horror, which had been specially written for her and her daughter Rachel Stirling by Mark Gatiss, and of course she was the Queen of Thorns, Oleanna Tyrell, in Game of Thrones.
She did Shakespeare, and the Morecambe and Wise Show, and she will shortly be seen in the new series of All Creatures Great and Small (returning to her native Yorkshire) and as another nun, Mother Dorothea, in Black Narcissus.
I was lucky enough to hear her rehearsing, once. I was on a coach tour in Scotland with my gran, and we were looking round the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling. Diana Rigg was in the pulpit, rehearsing a speech - there was no mistaking the voice. I was thrilled, and wanted to stay to listen, but my gran wasn't terribly sure who Diana Rigg was, and wanted to go and have a cup of tea before we had to get back to the coach. I see from her Wikipedia page that she had an honorary degree from the University of Stirling, where she was also Chancellor for a time.
She also collected a book of theatrical reviews called No Turn Unstoned.
I know what I'll be watching later this evening....
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