Theatre director Terry Hands dies aged 79

Theatre director Terry Hands, who had long associations with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Theatr Clwyd, has died at the age of 79.

Hands helped rescue Theatr Clwyd in Mold in 1997 and was a driving force in establishing Liverpool's Everyman.

His career saw him work with Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley and Derek Jacobi and earned him awards and a CBE.

Tamara Harvey, Hands' successor as Theatr Clwyd artistic director, called him "a giant of the theatre".

Hands stepped down from the Flintshire venue in 2015 when he directed Hamlet at the end of a career which was synonymous with William Shakespeare.

He had been at the helm for 17 years, following 25 years in Stratford, Warwickshire and his children Marina and Rupert followed him into the theatre.

When once asked about the future of theatre, he said: "There will always be people who don't like the arts because you can build a hospital, you can do another school.

"I mean, why put somebody on the moon, you could've built five hospitals?

"Why do anything which is not measurable? The theatre develops the imagination - thinking, the freedom."

Sir Patrick Stewart tweeted that he would "never forget" Hands who played a "very significant part" in his early Shakespeare career.

He said he met Hands "several times" in the past couple of years to talk about collaborating on another Shakespeare project.

"It will be forever a regret that we didn't," he added.

Ms Harvey called Hands a "colossus".

She added: "He saved the theatre from closure - this is actual truth, not hyperbole - and protected it from ongoing public funding cuts, keeping our theatre-making teams together whilst theatres across the country were losing theirs.

"He was a brilliant artist, a focused, dedicated and unswerving visionary, and - on the occasions we had dinner together - a charming, irreverent and very funny man."

Hands, who was educated in Surrey and at Birmingham University, was the founding artistic director of the Liverpool Everyman Theatre in 1964.

Two years later he joined the RSC, where he was behind the production of 21 Shakespeare plays over 25 years.

In 1978 Hands became joint artistic director with Trevor Nunn and took over as sole chief executive in 1986, running the company until 1990.

The company called him an "inspirational director".

RSC artistic director Gregory Doran said: "I first worked with Terry in his 1987 production of Julius Caesar with Roger Allam as Brutus, and was his assistant on Romeo and Juliet with Mark Rylance as Romeo the following year.

"He taught me to honour the driving impulse under Shakespeare's text and how to share that with an audience and keep them gripped by that momentum."

Sir Antony Sher, who worked with him at the Everyman and RSC, called Hands his mentor: "He was a brilliant and witty man and a remarkable director, able to create real stage magic, epic images of beauty and power. I will miss him hugely."

The Everyman Theatre said in a statement: "Without him we wouldn't be standing here on Hope Street, 56 years after his vision became a reality."