by London Times Newspapers
Joan Aiken, writer, was born on September 4, 1924. She died on January 4, aged 79.
Joan Aiken was the author of some of the best-loved children's books of our time, although she rarely received due recognition for them. She produced some 20 novels for adults, ingeniously exploiting the possibilities of crime and mystery, but her distinction as a writer lies in her varied and richly imaginative books for children. The axis of these is the long and inventive series of adventures that began with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase in 1962, predicated upon the alternative history of a Stuart monarchy continuing into the 19th century with Hanoverians questing for control. Aiken herself liked to live in worlds of her own, and although she had many friends, she was something of a recluse.
Frances Partridge, CBE, writer, was born on March 15, 1900. She died on February 5, aged 103.
Frances Partridge was the survivor of that small and loosely defined group of people named after a London square. She will be remembered for as long as people continue to be fascinated by Bloomsbury, since she knew all the key figures so well and played such a crucial role in the various crises in the life of one of them, Lytton Strachey. Although she began her writing life in 1927, not until she was 78 did she publish anything under her own name. Her biography of Julia Strachey and her two volumes of autobiography won high praise, but it is likely that her diaries will constitute her lasting memorial.
Norman Thelwell, cartoonist, was born on May 3, 1923. He died on February 7, aged 80.
In the new-found affluence of the Fifties, the growing numbers of middle-class parents saddled with six-legged daughters were a ready-made market for Norman Thelwell's child-and-pony cartoons, and his rotund little rosette-hungry horseriders and their spherical steeds became the bestselling stuff of books, mugs, greetings cards and tea towels. Also an enthusiastic landscape artist, he was philosophical about the comparative lack of attention his more serious work received, declaring in 1986: "I'm quite sure that there are many excellent artists who would not be averse to stumbling upon something which caught the public imagination."
His Eminence Franz Cardinal König, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vienna, 1956-85, was born on August 3, 1905. He died on March 13, aged 98.
The Austrian Cardinal Franz König was one of the most influential Roman Catholic churchmen of the postwar era. For four decades, under four popes, he was a trusted Vatican insider, exerting a profound and progressive influence on the worldwide Church. His greatest achievement was Catholicism's "opening to the East" at the height of the Cold War. For almost 25 years, he was a vital link between the Vatican and the persecuted Church of Eastern Europe. As Archbishop of Vienna, he also proposed John Paul II for the papacy.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, leader of Hamas, was born in 1937 or 1938. He died in an Israeli missile attack on March 22.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was the spiritual and political leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, an organisation infamous for its campaign of suicide bombings that led to the death of countless civilians. Confined to a wheelchair and speaking in small squeaks, Yassin had the demeanour of a fragile, pious sage. Yet he was possessed by an unswerving ruthlessness. His fanaticism inspired sacrificial devotion among men willing to kill civilians in the cause of the destruction of Israel.
Queen Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands, 1948-80, was born on April 30, 1909. She died on March 20, aged 94.
The style of Queen Juliana's reign of almost 32 years was informal and relaxed. She scrupulously performed her many royal duties, including making State visits to Britain in 1950 and 1972. And she was a unifying force in her country, both in the postwar years of reconstruction and when it proved difficult to find a prime minister for a coalition government for some months in 1972-73. Just as her mother, Queen Wilhelmina, had abdicated in 1948, Queen Juliana became the second to do so in 1980. Yet the affection of the Dutch people for their Royal Family was enhanced by the dignified handling of the successions.
Sir Peter Ustinov, CBE, entertainer, was born on April 16, 1921. He died on March 28, aged 82.
Sir Peter Ustinov was a wit, an actor, a diplomat, an intellectual who spoke six languages, a man of great understanding and of encompassing, Shakespearean spirit. He could be a figure of Falstaffian benevolence, laughing at the idiosyncrasies of men to show the shared humanity behind them; but equally he could be King Lear, raging against inhumanity. He appeared in nearly fifty films and won two Oscars; he wrote short stories and articles; he made records and radio programmes and directed plays, films and operas. Above all, he was the best of raconteurs. The sound of laughter was to him, he said, "the most civilised music in the world".
Alistair Cooke, journalist and broadcaster, was born on November 20, 1908. He died at midnight on March 29-30, aged 95.
The best-known broadcaster of his age, Alistair Cooke was also the most accomplished practitioner. His Letter from America, which went out weekly from 1946 until the month of his death, was easily the longest-running BBC programme. It spanned the history of America, from the days of recovery after the Second World War, through the Cold War and the turbulent 1960s, to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the Iraq war. Letter from America had its critics - who regarded it as altogether too bland and soft - but even among its detractors there was no denying the sheer professionalism with which it was done.
Norris McWhirter, CBE, author and broadcaster, was born on August 12, 1925. He died on April 20, aged 78.
After a brief career as an international sprinter, in which he represented Scotland and Great Britain in the early 1950s, Norris McWhirter became a sports journalist, then a television commentator. He and his twin, Ross, were fascinated by facts and became founder editors of the Guinness Book of Records in 1955, with Norris continuing until 1985. Individual freedom was their obsession, and after Ross's murder by the IRA in 1975, Norris launched the Freedom Association, campaigning for the strictest possible rule of law, which he believed to be the only basis for a free society.
Estée Lauder, cosmetics empire founder, was born on July 1, 1906. She died on April 24, aged 97.
Estée Lauder was a formidable businesswoman whose innate grasp of marketing and female psychology took her to the top of the beauty industry. She did not just sell face creams. She sold a dream, fleshed out by a series of lofty-looking house models. She was the first to use a model to represent a range: buy the face cream, the advertisements suggested, and you too might live like the Lauder woman. You too might inhabit a gracious world full of Ming vases, borzoi hounds, topiary and magnolias. By the early 1980s her company was worth about a billion dollars, making it the largest privately held cosmetics company in the world at the time.
Thom Gunn, poet, was born on August 29, 1929. He died on April 25, aged 74.
Thom Gunn was one of the most charismatic poetic talents of the past half-century and one of its shrewdest moralists. He made a strong critical impact with his first collection, Fighting Terms (1954), written while an undergraduate at Cambridge. His reputation wavered after his move to the United States, but he continued to develop as a poet, applying the disciplines of art to a life lived experimentally. From the 1970s on, his poetry dealt frankly with homosexual experience and his volume The Man With Night Sweats (1992), which registered the effects of the Aids crisis, won the first Forward Prize for poetry in Britain and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in the US.
Hubert Selby Jr, writer, was born on July 23, 1928. He died on April 27, aged 75.
Worked and reworked painstakingly over a period of six years, the handful of linked short stories that make up the novel Last Exit to Brooklyn gained for Hubert Selby an instant notoriety in 1964. Few authors have written so graphically of the brutalisation of the denizens of the streets. Yet Last Exit's dispassionate observation of violent robbery, prostitution, gang rape and homosexual activity are treated in an almost moralistic framework that lends them a power which endures beyond their initial capacity to shock.
The 11th Duke of Devonshire, KG, MC, was born on January 2, 1920. He died on May 3, aged 84.
A tall, slim, fit man who wore suits of the finest lightweight worsted, and who was always well brushed and pressed, Andrew Robert Buxton Cavendish was the younger son of the 10th Duke. His elder brother was killed in the last months of the Second World War, and as 11th Duke, Andrew managed to restore the fortunes of the family seat, Chatsworth. He was a man of many interests, the principal one being books. He was a pillar of support to the London Library, and he also assisted various tennis, racing and football bodies.
Lord Murray of Epping Forest, OBE, PC, General Secretary of the TUC, 1973-84, was born on August 2, 1922. He died on May 20, aged 81.
As General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress from 1973, Len Murray was at the helm during years in which the relationship between Government and industry on the one hand and organised labour on the other went through a profound and irrevocable change. When he assumed office in the final year of Edward Heath's Conservative adminstration, the TUC stood on the verge of greater influence on economic affairs than it had ever had before. But the Winter of Discontent strikes handed power from Callaghan's subsequent Labour Government to Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and by the time a second general election in 1983 had confirmed the Conservatives in power the TUC was a broken reed. Murray had seen his cherished belief in consensus in the conduct of economic life utterly vanquished. In retirement he adhered to his resolve to lead a private life.
Jack Rosenthal, CBE, television dramatist, was born on September 8, 1931. He died on May 29, aged 72.
Jack Rosenthal was one of the outstanding television dramatists of his generation and among the few whose work could be guaranteed to carry a personal signature. He wrote for Coronation Street, That Was the Week That Was and Taxi!, among many others. His forte was close observation of ordinary lives, tempering realism with humour, and he often drew on his own roots - northern, working-class and Jewish - to lend authenticity to his dramas. From the moment he met Maureen Lipman, whom he married in 1973, their writing, joking and punning was a collaborative pleasure.
Frances Shand Kydd, mother of Diana, Princess of Wales, was born on January 20, 1936. She died on June 3, aged 68.
As the mother of Diana, Princess of Wales, Frances Shand Kydd maintained her dignity at every stage of a life subjected to intolerable pressures caused by having fame thrust upon her family. As her son, Earl Spencer, put it: "Diana's marriage in 1981 moved us from the shadows of the landed aristocracy into the role of bit-part players in the soap-opera fantasy world that the media foisted on the Royal Family." She later converted to Roman Catholicism and was renowned for her charity work.
Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, 1981-89, was born on February 6, 1911. He died on June 5, aged 93.
Ronald Reagan manifestly lived the American dream in which he so fervently believed. He rose from the humblest origins to become a minor Hollywood star, Governor of California for two terms, and finally America's 40th President. His presidency was controversial and marked by some signal failures as well as achievements, but he handsomely won two presidential elections and was one of the few presidents to leave office better loved than when he was sworn in. As President, he will be primarily remembered for hastening the end of the Cold War by ordering the largest peacetime military build-up in United States history. By the time Reagan left office, the threat of nuclear war between the West and the communist bloc had greatly diminished. Reagan's foreign policy in other areas, however, notably the Middle East and Central America, was far less successful.
Ray Charles, musician, was born on September 23, 1930. He died on June 10, aged 73.
Ray Charles was a singer whose fusion of gospel fervour and secular love lyrics made him a seminal force in the pop music world. The singular authority of his rough-hewn, R'n'B vocal style had an immense impact on the British and Irish pop singers of the Sixties: Joe Cocker, Steve Winwood, Van Morrison and Eric Burdon, of the Animals, were among those who cited him as a formative influence. He was fluent in all three of the basic musical forms of black America - jazz, blues and gospel - and by welding them into a coherent whole he created the genre that became known as soul.
Anthony Buckeridge, OBE, schoolmaster, writer and playwright, was born on June 20, 1912. He died on June 28, aged 92.
"If I had been an undertaker," Anthony Buckeridge once wrote, "I would write funny stories about funerals." As a schoolmaster, though, he turned naturally to the foibles of boys for his source material and, in the creation of Linbury Court School and its inhabitants, he shared with several generations of young readers his delight in the ridiculous. His play Jennings Learns the Ropes, written after the war for the BBC, so impressed the producer of Children's Hour that he was commissioned for five more scripts. Such was their popularity that Buckeridge soon found himself kitting them out to join the ranks of the English school story, with the first book, Jennings Goes to School, appearing in 1950.
Marlon Brando, actor, was born on April 3, 1924. He died on July 1, aged 80.
For the generation of cinemagoers who came of age in the 1950s, Marlon Brando was a role model and icon. He had the talent to embrace the first half-dozen roles offered to him and he put an indelible personal stamp on each of them. He exuded a new kind of male sexuality, rough and sweating, as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). He was also noted for his appearances in The Wild One (1954) and On the Waterfront the same year. He was in the doldrums for 20 years before reinventing himself as The Godfather in 1972, and put himself back in favour among the intellectuals with Last Tango in Paris the same year. Later he worked when he felt the need to add a few noughts to his bank account, and the films of his last years were little more than footnotes to his long and impressive career.
Paul Foot, journalist and author, was born on November 8, 1937. He died on July 18, aged 66.
Variously regarded as being dedicated to the truth or as a calumniator of justly earned reputations, as being totally irresponsible or deeply humane, Paul Foot could never be denied the reputation of being one of the most compulsively readable and passionately committed journalists of his day. An articulate spokesman of the far Left in the pages of Private Eye, the Daily Mirror and The Guardian, and at the end of his life one of the few remaining proponents of old-fashioned revolutionary socialism, Foot was an Angry Young Man who refused to stop being angry.
Sacha Distel, singer and guitarist, was born on January 28, 1933. He died on July 22, aged 71.
Sacha Distel was a heart-throb French singer and entertainer whose projects ranged from pop vocal to jazz guitar and from Bardot to Chicago. The great Gallic vocal seducer of his era, with an irresistible appeal to women of all ages and climes, he became the best known of French male singers outside his own country. Yet the mere quality of his voice could hardly tell the whole story of the almost mesmeric effect he had on audiences wherever he appeared.
Francis Crick, OM, FRS, biologist, was born on June 8, 1916. He died on July 28, aged 88.
Francis Crick was one of the most distinguished and influential biologists of the 20th century, as well as one of the most flamboyant. He was the biologist whose co-discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 unlocked the "secret of life", for which, with J. D. Watson, he received a Nobel prize. He was not afraid to court controversy. In 1981 he published Life Itself, in which he suggested that life on Earth might have been planted as micro-organisms by an advanced alien civilisation.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographer, was born on August 22, 1908. He died on August 2, aged 95.
Considered by many to be the greatest photographer of the 20th century, Henri Cartier-Bresson was a legendary French photographer who evolved the concept of "the decisive moment" and helped to found the Magnum agency. Cartier-Bresson published many books, the most important of which, Images ā la Sauvette (1952), is his definitive statement and one of the seminal works in the history of photography.
Paul "Red" Adair, firefighter, was born on June 18, 1915. He died on August 7, aged 89.
When the Piper Alpha production platform in the North Sea exploded on July 8, 1988, killing 167 of the 225 men on board, there was only one man in the world who could douse the fires and avert an ecological disaster. The Occidental Petroleum Company called him in: "Red" Adair, a 73-year-old Texan whose exploits in fighting wild wells from the Equator to the Arctic Circle had made him a legend. Adair was credited with tackling more than 2,000 oil-well fires.
Bernard Levin, CBE, journalist, was born on August 19, 1928. He died on August 7, aged 75.
A writer whose life of passionate commentary on art and society was distilled in his 25 years as a Times columnist, Bernard Levin was the most famous journalist of his day. Prolific, controversial, passionate, versatile, maddening, enthusiastic, sometimes irresponsible, always courageous, he was recognised instantly in the street by people of all ages.
Fay Wray, actress, was born on September 15, 1907. She died on August 8, aged 96.
Fay Wray will always be remembered as the blonde girl who gets snatched up into the paw of a huge, besotted gorilla in the 1933 film classic King Kong. No Hollywood player of the vintage era had a bigger or hairier leading man; and few later took their pigeonholing as a one-film performer with such good grace. In the late 1920s, Wray worked with some of the most notable directors then working in Hollywood - Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg and Mauritz Stiller - and only five out of her seventy-seven feature films could properly be classified as horrors. But somehow the gorilla was always there.
Johnny Ramone (John Cummings), guitarist, was born on October 8, 1948. He died on September 15, aged 55.
Lou Reed's famous dictum that "one chord is fine, two chords are pushing it, three chords and you're into jazz" might well have been the maxim of Johnny Ramone, the guitarist of the band that played punk rock before the genre was even named. For more than 20 years, between the Ramones' formation in 1974 and their final split in 1996, Johnny Ramone stood stage right, legs spread, eyes down, hammering out some of the most influential chord sequences of the late 20th century.
Russ Meyer, film director, was born on March 21, 1922. He died on September 18, aged 82.
Russ Meyer was undoubtedly one of the most influential writers and directors in Hollywood in the second half of the 20th century and was hailed by the screenwriting guru William Goldman as American cinema's only true "auteur". Meyer was vilified by contemporary critics and his work banned and prosecuted by the authorities. Now it is studied in film schools and celebrated at high-brow festivals. But its value remains the subject of considerable debate: many still find it difficult to applaud a man whose work was driven by an obsession with large breasts. For whether they played kittens or killers, the women in Meyer's films all corresponded to his fantasies.
Brian Clough, footballer and manager, was born on March 21, 1935. He died on September 20, aged 69.
Brian Clough was one of the most successful football managers of his era, winning a total of 12 major trophies with the previously unfashionable Derby County and Nottingham Forest, both of whom he elevated from the second division to the League championship. He was one of only two managers to have won the old English first division title with different clubs. In addition, Clough led Forest to victory in the European Cup in 1979 and 1980. He was also perhaps the most charismatic - and certainly the most outspoken - football manager this country has produced.
Richard Avedon, photographer, was born on May 15, 1923. He died on October 1, aged 81.
Almost everyone who was anyone in late-20th-century Western culture was at some stage captured by the lens of Richard Avedon. His portfolio contained more than half a century of work: from Marilyn Monroe to Ezra Pound, from Jimmy Carter to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, hundreds stood against the bleak white backdrop that he made his hallmark. Though having one's portrait shot by Avedon was, from the 1950s onwards, a mark of having arrived in society, the pictures themselves were not always flattering. Avedon was often censured for what critics saw as the misanthropy of his approach - a judgment he sternly contested. He will also be remembered for his high-profile advertising campaigns for fashion giants such as Calvin Klein, Chanel and Versace.
Janet Leigh, actress, was born on July 6, 1927. She died on October 3, aged 77.
Janet Leigh made more than 50 films - romances, period dramas, thrillers and westerns - and she co-starred with Errol Flynn, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra and John Wayne, but she will be remembered primarily for one movie in which she died long before the end. A single scene has ensured her place in popular cinema history, and her character's death in Psycho (1960) remains one of the most memorable, chilling and iconic ever. Leigh's terror, Alfred Hitchcock 's frenetic camera-work and Bernard Herrmann's violin music gave audiences nightmares and set personal hygiene back years.
Maurice Wilkins, CBE, FRS, biophysicist, was born on December 16, 1916. He died on October 5, aged 87.
The biophysicist Maurice Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Jim Watson, nine years after their discovery of the structure of DNA. But while Crick and Watson enjoyed the limelight, Wilkins did not. A diffident and private man, he preferred to stay in the shadows, and his contribution to the remarkable discovery of the double-helix DNA structure - the molecule that genes are made of - remains relatively little known.
Jacques Derrida, philosopher, was born on July 15, 1930. He died on October 8, aged 74.
Jacques Derrida, whose name became practically synonymous with the word "deconstruction", had an enormous, though not uncontested, influence on literary study in the later half of the 20th century. While he disliked the term "philosopher", he was nevertheless one of the most important thinkers of his era. Derrida revolutionised our understanding of words, texts, reading and authorship. For him, the meanings of texts were never stable. His term "deconstruction theory" - the approach by which one unpicks a text layer by layer to expose its unspoken meanings - has become common parlance. Both his acolytes and his detractors agree that Derrida made a phenomenal contribution to Western philosophy.
Christopher Reeve, actor and activist for disabled rights, was born on September 25, 1952. He died on October 10, aged 52.
Christopher Reeve first came to fame in Superman (1978) as one of cinema's last great traditional heroes. A man who knew right from wrong, he was a superhero driven by a belief in truth and justice. In 1995 Reeve was paralysed from the neck down in a riding accident, and he went on to campaign ceaselessly for the disabled and their rights. He wrote a best- selling autobiography and even resumed his screen career, both as an actor and as a director.
John Peel, OBE, broadcaster, was born on August 30, 1939. He died on October 25, aged 65.
John Peel was Britain's most durable and consistently innovative disc jockey for almost 40 years. While most of his Radio 1 colleagues became identified with a specific era, style or genre of music and were soon superseded by younger faces, Peel endured thanks to his remarkable ability to adapt to changing musical fashions and to remain at the cutting edge of taste. He had a seemingly bottomless enthusiasm for the new and the left-field, and in his time he championed underground, progressive rock, punk, reggae, thrash metal, hip-hop, hardcore and ethnic music long before they crossed into the mainstream.
Lord Hanson, businessman, was born on January 20, 1922. He died on November 1, aged 82.
During the 1980s, the corporate-raiding Hanson Trust was the bane of sleepy corporations on both sides of the Atlantic. With a series of aggressive takeovers, it rapidly became one of Britain's biggest and most successful companies. The company's chairman, James Hanson, and his lieutenant, Gordon White, would identify and capture an undervalued, badly run target, then Hanson Trust would clear out the management, cut costs and restore the company to its core business. The two men were regularly denounced, but their supporters, who included Margaret Thatcher, argued that they delivered value for their shareholders and swept away the complacency that had bedevilled British and American management for far too long.
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, was born in 1918. He died on November 2, aged 86.
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates since its inception in 1971, began his adult life as a poor Beduin tribal leader and became one of the richest men in the world. He was the ruler of Abu Dhabi, the largest and richest of the seven trucial states of the Gulf which became united under his presidency in December 1971 after the withdrawal of British Forces from the region. As such he wisely oversaw the spending in the UAE of the huge revenues from oil which had come on stream in Abu Dhabi from 1962. The UAE is the third-largest oil producer in the Gulf after Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Emlyn Hughes, OBE, footballer, was born on August 28, 1947. He died on November 9, aged 57.
Known to players and fans as "Crazy Horse", Emlyn Hughes was one of the most talented footballers of the 1970s, and almost certainly the most enthusiastic. He played for England 62 times, 24 of them as captain, and was captain of Liverpool during one of the club's glory eras. He was an inspiring leader. "I am a shouter on the field and though 90 per cent might be rubbish, the remaining 10 per cent could be good advice," he said. He later found renown as a panellist on the BBC's A Question of Sport.
Yassir Arafat, President of the Palestinian National Authority, was born on August 4, 1929. He died on November 11, aged 75.
Yassir Arafat was the Palestinian leader who inspired his people's struggle for a homeland but lacked the political clout to make their dream a reality. A tireless politician, administrator and, in the opinion of some, an exhibitionist and opportunist, for more than 40 years Arafat inspired his people to remain hopeful for eventual freedom from Israeli occupation. He also won almost universal recognition for his Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole representative of the Palestinian nation. In 1994 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, jointly with Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister. In the end, however, he took his dream of a Palestinian state to his grave.
Arthur Hailey, novelist, was born on April 5, 1920. He died on November 24, aged 84.
Arthur Hailey was famous both for the reliance of his fiction on facts (hostile critics called them factoids) and for the feature films that were made from his books. Airport, published in 1968, was perhaps the best known of these; it was made into an immensely successful movie and inspired several more on cognate subjects. His 11 books were published in 40 countries, and world sales to date have exceeded 170 million copies. A prodigious researcher, he disclaimed any creative dimension to his books. "I don't think I really invented anybody," he said.
Dame Alicia Markova, ballerina, was born on December 1, 1910. She died on December 2, aged 94.
Alicia Markova became an international star while helping to establish a British ballet tradition. She was blessed with a phenomenal technique and beautiful style, and her presence at a critical time in the 1930s proved invaluable in founding the institution of British ballet, not only by attracting audiences to the early efforts of the young companies but by the inspiration she provided both to creative artists and to other dancers.
Lord Scarman, PC, OBE, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, 1977-86, was born on July 29, 1911. He died on December 8, aged 93.
In a distinguished judicial career Lord Scarman won an assured place in the annals of English law as the outstandingly successful chairman of the Law Commission during the first seven years of its life, and he went on to become a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1977 to 1986. He was a man of radical and progressive instincts, and in no instance was his liberal humanity and understanding of social issues better displayed than in his remarkable report on the Brixton riots of 1981.
Renata Tebaldi, Italian soprano, was born on February 1, 1922. She died on December 19, aged 82.
To many Italians, Tebaldi was la nostra Renata, our Renata. Many of her greatest successes were in America, both North and South, but she remained the most Italian of singers. She refused to sing in any language but her own, even if the opera happened to be by Wagner or Gounod. She preferred to speak in Italian and had only a smattering of English when she conquered the Metropolitan Opera House in the mid-1950s. But the phrase was also used to divide Tebaldi from her great rival Maria Callas. When Callas was "in" at La Scala, then Tebaldi was out. And vice versa.
Anthony Sampson, author and journalist, was born on August 3, 1926. He died on December 18, aged 78.
An author and journalist with a lifelong commitment to human rights and social justice, Anthony Sampson fought his first battles in Africa in the 1950s, when he was involved in the African National Congress's struggle against the iniquities of the South African apartheid regime. Invited to edit the influential magazine Drum, he became a close associate of Nelson Mandela and other leading ANC figures and found himself at the heart of African nationalist aspirations.
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