Timothy West is talking to me from his Guildford dressing room with half an hour to go curtain-up for The Winslow Boy, which comes to the Oxford Playhouse next week.

“There are red wine parts and there are white wine parts,” he tells me. Warming to his theme: “So Hamlet is white wine, Macbeth red. Brutus red, but Richard II white.”

So that should make his character as the eponymous boy’s father — a retired bank manager — in the Terence Rattigan classic something of a fruity rose: bland and mild at the outset, but gaining colour all the while as he pursues justice for his son, accused of stealing a five shilling postal order and having been drummed out of naval college.

Rattigan’s reputation as a hugely successful playwright after the Second World War — The Winslow Boy was first produced in 1946 — was seemingly under threat at precisely the time that West came to the stage in 1959.

“What happened then, with productions like Look Back in Anger and other things at the Royal Court, was that it was regarded as a watershed and that everything that had been written up until that time should be relegated to the dustbin.

“Certain authors possibly deserved that, but certainly not Rattigan, who was a fine writer and whose best plays speak to today just as well as when he wrote them.”

The Winslow Boy was based on a true story, involving a lengthy court case, and the playwright’s chosen director, Anthony Asquith, was, West told me, mightily unsure: “He said, ‘you can’t put that on the stage: trial scenes are tremendously expensive and anyway, nothing really fits after it’.

“But Rattigan said, ‘no, we don’t need an actual trial, we can just talk about it’. It works brilliantly and you certainly don’t need to go outside the room he sets it in.”

Timothy West, now 75, is the son of the fine stage actor Lockwood West and is, of course, married to Prunella Scales. Their son, Sam, continues the thespian tradition.

But, arguably, it is Timothy who has demonstrated the greatest range over his career. He’s done three Lears, a couple of Falstaffs and a famous Edward VII.

I first saw him on stage in Edinburgh nearly 40 years ago as Samuel Johnson. He’s played God and Rumpole on radio and is fondly remembered for his portrayal of mine-owner Bradley Hardacre in the 1980s ITV series Brass, a spoof of all ‘trooble at t’mill’ tales.

It goes without saying, he told me, that his father didn’t want him to go into the profession: “He would rather that I had a proper job, and for a long time he wished that I had. But suddenly he began to get quite pleased and perhaps a little proud.

“When I started, everyone was worried about the insecurity involved; but nowadays, people tend to say to my actor friends, ‘how lucky you are to be in the theatre. My husband’s a businessman’.”

Which led to an easy next question. West in a parallel life is president of LAMDA (The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art): so what advice would he give to an aspiring actor who is still likely to spend most of his or her time out of work?

“In the old days of weekly rep, you had to be versatile. Nowadays, versatility counts against you. I say, don’t get stuck in a groove. Don’t say, ‘I’m going to be a film star or I’m going to concentrate on being in a top popular TV series’. Go on a Shakespeare tour to Nicaragua, or do a commercial for a Hoover or go and read some poetry to some blind people in North Wales. It might even be some fun!”

Anyone who misses West in The Winslow Boy won’t have long to wait before he comes back to the Playhouse stage. He, together with his wife and son, will be back on Sunday, July 26, for A Family Affair — in aid of the theatre’s 70th anniversary campaign.

It’s for one night only, and Timothy West admitted to me that they’re still putting material together for the show: “It’ll be the three of us reading things, about husbands and wives and mothers and fathers and sons. Lots and lots of bits.”

He’s been at the top of his profession for decades, but there’s something splendidly down to earth about Timothy West CBE.

He really does not need to talk to the local press and is probably regaled with the same questions every time.

Maybe, just maybe, I prised something truly personal out of him: “I’m a Shiraz, verging occasionally towards a Gevrey Chambertin, but not very often!”

lThe Winslow Boy runs at the Playhouse from Monday, June 22, to Saturday, June 27.