His flamboyant dress sense and stylish performances led to success, and he was considered a style icon in Britain and elsewhere in the early 1970s.

[12] Passenger records of Peter Wyngarde's journey to the UK in 1945[27] and a biography published in 2020[12] name his father as a British merchant seaman called Henry Goldbert (1897–1945).

Despite being named as Wyngarde's next of kin on the passenger manifest, Henry Goldbert appears to have died in the US in October 1945, a few weeks before his son arrived in the UK from Shanghai.

[46][45] His stepfather appears to have inspired Wyngarde's later claims that his father was a dealer of antique watches, and that he was a maternal nephew of the French actor-director Louis Jouvet.

Cyril Goldbert left Shanghai that autumn and travelled to the UK on the Cunard-White Star Line ship Arawa.

[57] His own accounts of his life after leaving Shanghai for England appear to have been embellished with a prestigious history of education, travel and work.

In part, this helped account for the six-year gap created by his claim to have been a 12-year-old boy when he left Shanghai, not a man of 18 as the passenger manifest says.

It seems unlikely that any of this is true because records show that Wyngarde arrived in the UK from Shanghai aged 18 in December 1945 and began his professional acting career in early 1946 just a few months later.

Having changed his name from Cyril Goldbert to Peter Wyngarde on arrival in the UK in December 1945, within a few months he began his professional acting career.

He first appeared at the Buxton Playhouse in 1946,[4] and the following year in a production of Noël Coward's Present Laughter at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham.

[4] His theatre appearances included playing opposite Vivien Leigh in 1958, and as Cyrano de Bergerac at the Bristol Old Vic in 1959, which he considered a highlight of his career.

[59] He appeared as Long John Silver in an adaptation of The Adventures of Ben Gunn (1958),[4] and as Sir Roger Casement in an episode of Granada Television's On Trial series produced by Peter Wildeblood.

By the late 1960s, Wyngarde was guest starring in television series of the time, many of which were shown internationally, including The Avengers, The Saint, The Baron, The Champions and I Spy.

[53] King led a hedonistic lifestyle; he often got the girl but as she is about to kiss him manages to avoid it, much to the annoyance of co-actor Joel Fabiani.

[25] Carl Gresham, his promotional manager at this time said later that "During the '70s we had a contract to officially open over 30 Woolworths newly refurbished stores throughout the UK.

Other than my friends and clients, Morecambe & Wise, Peter was the most requested and highest paid celebrity making personal appearances.

"[62] In the role, he "became a style icon, with his droopy moustache, hair that looked like a bearskin hat and a wardrobe of wide-lapelled, three-piece suits, cravats and open-necked shirts in colours so bright they might hurt sensitive eyes.

[66] Other TV appearances include Doctor Who (in the four-episode-story Planet of Fire, 1984), Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984), Bulman (1985), The Lenny Henry Show (1994) and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994).

After leaving a 1995 stage production of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari due to a throat infection while still in previews,[67] Wyngarde mostly stopped acting except for occasional voice work.

Screenwriter Mark Millar says that when casting his 2004 film Layer Cake, the director Matthew Vaughn wanted Wyngarde for a role, but was told that he had died.

[71] In January 2014, he narrated an episode of the BBC Four Timeshift documentary strand How to Be Sherlock Holmes: The Many Faces of a Master Detective.

[81] They separated after three years and by November 1955, Stevens was described in a TV Times profile as "a bachelor girl, sharing a mews flat near Portland Place, London, with Cassio, her wire-haired terrier".

[85] From 1956 to 1958, Wyngarde shared a flat with Ruby Talbot in London and the 2020 biography cites the electoral roll as evidence that this was a romantic relationship.

[61] In July 1974, Jeremy Dallas-Cope, a 23-year-old described as Wyngarde's former "male secretary and personal assistant", was found guilty at his trial at the Old Bailey and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, for forging nearly £3,000 worth of cheques from the actor's bank account.

Upon the fraud scheme being discovered Dallas-Cope persuaded his flatmate Anthony O'Donoghue, a male model, "to attempt suicide and take the blame".

[91][92] The Evening Standard reported that Wyngarde pleaded guilty although his solicitor tried to mitigate the charge as a "mental aberration" brought on by excessive drinking.

[101] Morrissey wrote in his 2013 autobiography about visiting Wyngarde at home in Earls Terrace: [His flat is] an Edwardian warren of clerical ferocity – a tornado of books and papers and swelling pyramids of typescripts, half-finished, half-begun.

[103] An appreciation society called The Hellfire Club was founded in 1992 with the actor's support,[104] with members receiving its quarterly magazine by post.

The organiser of The Hellfire Club took Wyngarde's surname after his death[109] and in 2020 she published a biography which claimed to draw on personal knowledge of the subject.

[110] Wyngarde's agent and manager reported that he was admitted to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London in October 2017 with an unspecified illness.