George Winchester Howe (19 April 1900 – 24 June 1986) was an English actor who played numerous stage roles, was a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and appeared in four feature films.

Howe acted in a wide range of plays, including new and classic comedies and historical dramas and was frequently seen in works by Chekhov and Shakespeare.

[1][3] In 1930 Howe joined the Old Vic company, then headed by John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, who co-opted him into an informal three-man committee who, he recalled, "discussed and hinted and generally interfered over the productions".

[4] His roles there were Worcester in Henry IV, Part I, Octavius in Antony and Cleopatra, Trinculo in The Tempest, Oakly in The Jealous Wife, Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, Major Petkoff in Arms and the Man, Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing and Gloucester in King Lear.

[1] His roles in the West End in the early 1930s ranged from historical drama to Peter Pan; in 1934 he first played the part with which he came to be most closely associated, Polonius in Hamlet.

After the war one of Howe's longest engagements was as Godfrey Pond, the harassed headmaster in the farce The Happiest Days of Your Life (1948), which he played more than 600 times.

[6] Also at Chichester he was in A Woman of No Importance in which The Stage said, "with but a few lines George Howe re-creates all the character, past and present, of Sir John Pontefract".

Later television roles included Burley in Richard of Bordeaux (1955), Charles Cheeryble in Nicholas Nickleby (1957), Crassus in The Apple Cart (1957), Reginald Wilfer in Our Mutual Friend (1958), Squire Frankland in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1968), Sir Thomas Erpingham in Henry V (1979) and Euphronius in Antony and Cleopatra (1981).