Heartbreak for Call the Midwife star Jenny Agutter as husband Johan Tham dies aged 81

Call the Midwife star Jenny Agutter's husband, Johan Tham, has died aged 81. The Swedish property entrepreneur and hotelier passed away from cancer on November 17, 2025.

Tham, best known for restoring Cliveden House to its former glory, met the actress, 73, in 1989 at an arts festival in Bath. The couple married at Cliveden in August 1990 and went on to welcome a son Jonathan, who is a GP.

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Reflecting on their first meeting in an interview with the Daily Mail in 2022, Jenny explained: "One of the things about meeting people and forming relationships as an actor is that others have an idea of who you are before they meet you. That's hard in any relationship, particularly with men. 

"When John and I met I did not feel he had any sense of who I was at all, but he wanted to find out, and that made a big difference. I'm still finding out about him 31 years on."

Johan's first marriage

Before his relationship with Jenny, Johan was married to Anna Lallerstedt, with whom he had two stepchildren and a daughter, Johanna. The couple divorced and Johan went on to marry Jenny. 

© Photo: Rex

Johan's early life and career

Johan was born in 1944 in Nykoping, Sweden to his international timber importer father, Vollrath Tham, and his housewife mother, Maja Tham. He had one sister, Christina, and twin brothers, Sebastian and Peter. 

Johan and his family moved to England when he was four years old. He attended Heatherdown School before boarding at Charterhouse. Johan went on to study law at university before turning to a career in property. His early jobs included managing a funeral parlour and a petrol station.

© Patrick Wang

In 1978, Johan formed Blakeney Hotels with a businessman named John Lewis. Together, they bought the central property in the Royal Crescent in Bath and transformed it into a hotel. 

Johan went on to become managing director of Cliveden House in Buckinghamshire and transformed it into a high-end hotel in the 1980s. The Grade I listed stately home boasts a rich history, with Christine Keeler among the list of guests at the house during the 1960s. It's where she met Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, with their relationship, known as the Profumo affair, sparking a huge scandal which resulted in Profumo's resignation.

In 2011, Cliveden was sold to property developer brothers Ian and Richard Livingston.