Commentariat

Telegraph Obituaries

German soprano whose ’sensual’ performances as Salome enthralled critics and audiences for a quarter of a century.

Linguist with the BBC’s wartime Monitoring Service.

Civil servant who worked closely with the former head of MI6.

Master of chess who raised the game of a generation of British players.

Entrepreneur who amassed an estimated £300 million fortune.

Awardwinning Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House and dreamed of joining the navy.

Organist whose BBC Radio programme was so popular that 43000 complained when it was axed

Playwright whose successes included the postwar hits The Miracle Worker and Two for the Seesaw

Champion dog breeder who as a child terrorised her nannies and went gliding aged 96

Telegraph war correspondent at the Battle of Arnhem who was shot down on his first flight in an aircraft.

Scholar who wrote about the development of notions of time Chaucer Stonehenge and Holbein’s Ambassadors.

Stella Hillier was a BBC radio producer who dragged Dylan Thomas from the pub to finish Under Milk Wood.

Stockbroker who helped to reposition Kleinwort Benson as a leading investment bank in the 1980s

MajorGeneral Donald Isles was head of the Army’s weapons division who fought in Italy and served in Palestine Kenya and Cyprus.

Julian Chrysostomides was a scholar who chose exile from her native Constantinople and won the admiration of her tutor Iris Murdoch.

Nick Mills was a vet who worked as a sex therapist for racehorses devised a skateboard for a tortoise and invented a fish attractor.

Richard Hickox who has died aged 60 was one of the foremost British conductors; he did much to raise the status of choral music in general and English composers such as Vaughan Williams Elgar and Britten in particular.

Richey Edwards who was the colyricist with the Manic Street Preachers and assumed the status of a British Kurt Cobain.

Russian businessman and politician who served as a reformist deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin.

Liberalminded Tory MP for MidKent who tried to abolish the Commons and promoted voluntary work.

Lady Bliss was the wife of Sir Arthur Bliss and custodian of his legacy who forged her own career as an author and broadcaster.

Guy Peellaert was an artist photographer and illustrator whose images of rock and roll heroes earned him international cult status.

Clive Barnes was a dance and theatre critic who went from workingclass roots in England to huge influence on Broadway

Fred Newman was a magazine publisher who founded the British Book Awards the Oscars of the publishing industry.

Hollywood screenwriter who created scripts for two Marx Brothers films and minted many quickfire jokes.