Early Life
Whately is from Humshaugh, near Hexham, Northumberland. His mother, Mary (née Pickering-), was a teacher and his father, Richard, was a Commander in the Royal Navy. His maternal grandmother, Doris Phillips, was a professional concert singer and his great-great-grandfather, Richard Whately, was Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. The BBC documentary Who Do You Think You Are?, broadcast on 2 March 2009, also revealed that Whately is a descendant, on his paternal side, of Thomas Whately of Nonsuch Park, a leading London merchant, English politician and writer who became a director of the Bank of England, and of Major Robert Thompson, a pioneer tobacco plantation owner in Virginia who was a staunch supporter of the Parliamentarian cause at the time of the English Commonwealth.
Whately was educated at Barnard Castle School, and studied drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1975, and was the patron for the school's Full House Theatre Company for 2011. His brother, Frank, is a drama lecturer at a London university. Before going professional, Whately was an amateur actor at the People's Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne during the 1970s.
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