Oscar-winning British writer and actor Colin Welland has died peacefully in his sleep on Monday in London, after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for several years. He was 81 as his family announced.

In a statement released via his literary agent Anthony Jones on Tuesday, his family said: "Colin will be desperately missed by his family and friends.

Alzheimer is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and gets worse over time.

The most common symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events (short-term memory loss).

Colin Welland is famously for his line, "The British are coming" in his Academy Award, acceptance speech for Chariots of Fire in 1982.

An English actor Nigel Havers, who played Lord Andrew Lindsay in the 1981 British film Chariots of Fire said:

"I remember him being great fun with a great sense of humour and a very honest man. He had a tremendous honesty about everything he wrote. I'm just very surprised he never made more films in Hollywood. It's a great loss to us all."

The actor and writer, who appeared in the TV show Z Cars and also acted in Ken Loach’s Kes and Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, also wrote the Gene Hackman-starrer Twice In A Lifetime and the Marlon Brando apartheid drama A Dry White Season.

He also played a newspaper editor in the 1977 film Sweeney, and appeared in Kes, the 1969 film directed by Ken Loach that told the story of a young boy played by actor David Bradley who receives praise from Welland's character, Mr Farthing, for a talk he gives at school about his close relationship with a kestrel hawk.

Welland, also found success as an actor. He received a best supporting BAFTA prize for the role of English teacher and he also won a BAFTA award for writing TV plays in 1971.

His writing also include Yanks (1979), which starred actress Vanessa Redgrave and actor-activist Richard Gere, and the screenplay for twice in a lifetime (1985).

He has a wife Patricia, four children and six grandchildren.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34711578