Lydia Villiers is a character appearing in the episode Ghosts of Christmas Past of the ITV crime drama Midsomer Murders.
The elderly aunt of the the four Villiers siblings. She moved to the family seat to be their guardian after the deaths of their parents.
As she grew older she became increasingly concerned that she should end her days in some state home. At one point her niece, Jennifer, assured her that she'd have a home as long as she needed and at another dangled the image of a National Health Home in front of her.
When her nephew, Ferdy, hired Claire English as his stage assistant, and later became engaged to her, Jennifer was furious and hired private detectives to dig up dirt on her. When a record for minor theft and drug use was returned, she forced Lydia, who actually liked Claire, to report a valuable art-deco statuette she'd entrusted to Claire for a valuation, as stolen.
Her actions were recorded by Aunt Lydia as 'evil' in the privacy of her diary.
Nine years later, she was targeted by Dominic Jones for revenge and found herself locked in a garage with a running car. She made enough noise so that she was rescued, but later that night she was lured out of her room and shoved down the stairs. After reviving enough to give a brief statement to the police she died of her injuries.