June Brown won her place in British hearts playing the chain-smoking washerwoman, Dot Cotton in EastEnders.

It was a part she would play for more than 30 years - well past her 90th birthday. 
June Muriel Brown was born in Needham Market, Suffolk in 1927.  Her father, Harry, was a wealthy businessman who went bust investing money in German banks before World War Two. 

Her younger brother, John, died of pneumonia in 1932 when he was just 15 days old. Two years later, June lost her elder sister to meningitis. The loss of 8 year old Marise affected her deeply.

Brown served in the Women's Royal Naval Service at the end of the war. She was based in Scotland and was a Cine-op Wren from 1944-46 projecting instructional films on survival at sea to naval men.

The newsreels of the liberation of Belsen horrified her. "It was extremely shocking for a girl of 18", she told one interviewer. "We were a very innocent generation.”

Later in her life she fronted an episode of Women at War: 100 years of service where she interviewed servicewomen in the Navy. During the programme June drove a naval vessel as no women did until the 1990s. She told the show that the Wrens had paved the way for the women of today.

A young June Brown left the forces and won a place at London's Old Vic Theatre School where she met and married her first husband, actor John Garley. He suffered from depression and took his own life in 1957.

Professionally, she was very successful. She spent years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing on stage with Alec Guinness, John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft.

In 1958, she married actor Robert Arnold who starred in the BBC series Dixon Of Dock Green. The couple shared 45 years of marriage, before Arnold died of pneumonia in 2003. They had six children together in just seven years, although her second daughter Chloe, born prematurely at 28 weeks, died after just 16 days.

Motherhood saw the acting work dry up. Brown considered completing her education and even began A' level biology. But she found it too much to juggle in her forties - with so many children - and never completed the course. 

She gave acting another go in the 1970s - with a series of small parts in film and television. There were appearances in Coronation Street and Doctor Who. 

And then Leslie Grantham, who played EastEnders' Dirty Den put her forward for the part that would make her a British icon… the legend that was Dot Cotton.

She once told The Times that she was "never going to be made a Dame doing Dot" - but she was awarded the MBE for services to drama and charity.