[2] He attended St George's Grammar School, Cape Town, and, although the family was not Catholic, at a now-defunct Christian Brothers College,[3] where he played in the rugby team.

Hawthorne made his professional stage debut in 1950, playing Archie Fellows in a Cape Town production of The Shop at Sly Corner.

Finding success in London, Hawthorne decided to try his luck in New York City and eventually got a part in a 1974 production of As You Like It on Broadway.

He also supplemented his income by appearing in television advertisements, including one for Mackeson Stout, and in the early 1990s starred alongside Tom Conti in a long-running series of commercials for Vauxhall.

[5] Although Hawthorne had appeared in small roles in various British television series since the late 1950s, his most famous role was as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary of the fictional Department of Administrative Affairs in the television series Yes Minister (and Cabinet Secretary in its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister), for which he won four BAFTA awards during the 1980s.

That same year, he starred opposite Clint Eastwood in the Cold War thriller Firefox, where he played a dissident Russian scientist.

[8] He was survived by Bentham, and his funeral service was held at St Mary's, the parish church of Thundridge near Ware, Hertfordshire, following which he was cremated at Stevenage Crematorium.

[10] On hearing of Hawthorne's death Alan Bennett described him in his diary: "Courteous, grand, a man of the world and superb at what he did, with his technique never so obvious as to become familiar as, say, Olivier's did or Alec Guinness's.