Commentariat

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Christopher Hibbert was probably the most widely-read popular historian of our
time and undoubtedly one of the most prolific.

Eartha Kitt was a singular figure in American entertainment in the course of a
career of remarkable versatility and enviable stamina that spanned six
decades. Whether she was singing, acting or dancing, she exuded a sensual,
erotic magnetism that was often described as “feline” and led Orson Welles
famously to describe her as “the most exciting woman in the world”.

Dorothy Porter was a commercially and critically successful Australian poet,
with an international following. A remarkable performer of her own work, she
achieved unusual success with verse novels, one of which, The Monkey’s Mask,
was made into a film and adapted for BBC radio.

Among contemporary dramatists Harold Pinter holds a unique place. Few, if any,
have so lastingly and so profoundly influenced fellow playwrights — not just
in this country but also beyond. And none has been so garlanded with high
honours. A CBE at 36, he was made a Companion of Honour in 2002 and, in
2005, won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Lansana Conté was the authoritarian ruler of the Republic of Guinea for more
than two decades after seizing power in a military coup in April 1984. He
succeeded Ahmed Sékou Touré, who had led Guinea since it won independence
from France in 1958.

Mary Howard was the Queen of Christmas fairs, having raised more than a £1
million for numerous charities including the NSPCC and Help for Heroes. She
created and ran the Mary Howard Sales, which began in the 1980s and became
the largest arts, crafts and home-cooked food fairs in the UK. In 2005 she
was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the NSPCC for her tireless
efforts on their behalf.

Emmie Yelding lived through a golden age of the circus and was a gifted circus
performer and owner of a small zoo.

Yukika Sohma was a Japanese politician’s daughter who, though she never held
public office, revolutionised Japan’s approach to refugees and devoted
herself tirelessly to helping Japan take responsibility on the world stage,
commensurate with its economic power.

Kathleen McFarlane won international recognition for textile works created
from string, cotton, sisal and wool. She was an artist whose weaving,
tapestry and crochet was imbued with disturbing and menacing undercurrents.
Her work imagined strange forms and visions, of fungal growths, bodily parts
and flayed animals that were both colourful and dark.

Pauline Rumbold was a truly charming product of the turbulent 1940s, the vivid
age in which she came to maturity. The daughter of a colourful aristocrat,
David Tennant, who founded the Gargoyle Club in Soho, and of the actress
Hermione Baddeley, Pauline Rumbold mixed these qualities in a manner
effortlessly her own. She moved from repertory theatre to high society with
ease, at home in a Soho dive or a stately home.

Peter Fellgett was Emeritus Professor of Cybernetics at the University of
Reading and the first professor of cybernetics in Britain. As such he was
responsible for bringing together a group of academics who were specialists
in control, computing, artificial intelligence, instrumentation, electronics
and aspects of human biology. They developed the academic degrees which were
eventually called cybernetics and control engineering, cybernetic science,
computer science and cybernetics, and psychology and cybernetics — whose
cybernetic content was consistent with the founder of cybernetics Norbert
Wiener’s definition: control and communication in the animal and the
machine.

Adrian Mitchell was a playwright, a journalist and one of Britain’s foremost
performance poets. Much of his early and best-known work attacked nuclear
armament, Western imperialism — especially with regard to the war in Vietnam
— capitalism and racism. His style was acerbic, and his techniques were
broadranging: poems virtually free of hard rhythm and metre were published
alongside tum-ti-tum lyrics that used structure as much as vocabulary to
satirise targets and explore the 1960s themes that Mitchell helped to
popularise.

Beverly Garland made her name as the archetypal shock-faced actress of 1950s
Hollywood low-budget horror movies before establishing herself as a familiar
presence in several US television series.

Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet had three leading women when it was building up after
the Revolution, but the only one of them seen in Britain was the vividly
expressive Galina Ulanova during the company’s 1956 tour. The oldest of the
three (100 this year) was Marina Semyonova who, to judge from accounts and
from snatches of film, was also the most elegant. That leaves Olga
Lepeshinskaya, who was tiny and whose style was what we would call demi-caractère,
that is, with the academic technique coloured by a more dramatic or comic
manner.

The Earl of Wemyss

Davey Graham was the doyen of British acoustic folk guitarists. His virtuosity
and invention inspired a generation of players, such as Bert Jansch, John
Renbourn and John Martyn, as well as many outside the folk world, including
Paul Simon and Jimmy Page.

Sir Bernard Crick belonged to an endangered species. He was a public
intellectual in the mould of the great socialist sages of the first half of
the last century — Graham Wallas, G. D. H. Cole, R. H. Tawney and Harold
Laski. He was a distinguished political theorist, with three important
scholarly works to his credit, as well as one great one.

Conor Cruise O’Brien’s life straddled diplomacy, politics, historical
scholarship, literature and journalism. He was a diplomat at the UN, a
professor in the US, a government minister in Ireland, the Editor-in-Chief
of The Observer in Britain and a writer whose work commanded
attention throughout the English-speaking world.

“I’m the guy they called Deep Throat,” said the former FBI agent Mark Felt.
With that admission he ended, after more than 30 years, the best-kept secret
of American journalism.

Ewen Balfour

In the autumn of 1970 15-year-old Sam Bottoms travelled from his home in
California to the little Texan town of Archer City simply to watch The
Last Picture Show (1971) being filmed. His elder brother, Timothy, was
one of the stars, and this was going to be his big break. But after meeting
the director, Peter Bogdanovich, the younger Bottoms suddenly found himself
in the film as well, alongside his brother and the likes of Cybill Shepherd
and the veteran actor Ben Johnson.

Jack Douglas had a long career in variety acts as a straight man and was later
an accomplished comic character actor. He was best known for his appearances
in eight of the Carry On films, usually in the guise of his alter
ego, “Alf Ippititimus”.

Although he inherited a string of titles, several great houses and many
thousands of acres, David Wemyss was clear where his interests lay. He
devoted himself to those matters where he believed he could make a
difference — to Scotland, its heritage and environment, and to public
service. His 47-year association with the National Trust for Scotland, as
member, chairman of council, president and president emeritus, changed the
whole course of that organisation.

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene
Roddenberry, was literally the voice of Star Trek. For more than 40 years
she provided the voice of the Starship Enterprise, on television and in the
films, including the new one due out next year. She also played several
characters, did much to promote her husband’s legacy, regularly attended fan
conventions and was affectionately known as “The First Lady of Star Trek”.

León Febres Cordero was a central and colourful figure on the right of
Ecuador’s political spectrum for 50 years. He reached the height of his
power as President of Ecuador between 1984 and 1988. In a long career as a
politician with the centre-right Social Christian Party he was a senator, a
deputy and later mayor of his home city, Guayaquil, on the Pacific Coast,
between 1992 and 2000.