Obituaries from Times Online en-uk Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:37:29 GMT Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. custserv@timesonline.co.uk http://www.timesonline.co.uk Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:39:26 GMT Newspapers 144 21 http://www.timesonline.co.uk http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,116979,00.gif Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:47:50 GMT 2009-07-01T06:00:31Z Mel Webb could proudly claim that he had written about more than two dozen sports for The Times during an association with the paper that covered a similar number of years. Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:35:48 GMT 2009-07-10T05:35:49Z Dawick Haig, as he was known from his courtesy title in early schooldays, was thrust under the spotlight aged 10 when his father, the Field Marshal and commander of the British Army in France from 1915, died in 1928. Given the public scrutiny to which he was subjected, it is possible that he might never have discovered his own resources had he not endured the isolation and privations of a prisoner of war. It was during that time that he turned to painting for fulfilment and, rightly, he would wish to be remembered as a painter rather than as a soldier. Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:21:01 GMT 2009-07-10T05:21:01Z Modern sport does not tend to splash sobriquets around but, 60 years on, when a Welshman referred to the “Prince of Centres” he would invariably be thinking of Bleddyn Williams. He played rugby union for Cardiff, Wales and the Lions with natural intelligence and the gifts of speed and strength, to which he added tricks of the game that placed him in a class of his own in the northern hemisphere. Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:35:44 GMT 2009-07-10T05:10:42Z Tom Keylock played a crucial part in the turbulent 1960s history of the Rolling Stones. Initially employed as a chauffeur, he swiftly became indispensable as the band’s most trusted all-round “fixer”. Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:16:25 GMT 2009-07-09T06:16:26Z Una Hamilton Wright was the proud torch-bearer of her Uncle Charlie’s literary legacy. He was Charles Hamilton, best known as “Frank Richards”, the hugely prolific creator of Billy Bunter. Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:14:24 GMT 2009-07-10T11:59:37Z “She has no idea how good she is” — thus said C. H. Rolph, overheard by Naomi Lewis (the subject of his comment) at a drinks party some time in the 1940s, probably hosted by the New Statesman & Nation. It was an unusual goodness though to be found in the hothouse of journalistic rivalries, and if Lewis was unaware of it then that was surely because it was from the start unforced, a second nature. Indeed, it manifested itself as such throughout her long life in a succession of modest but perfectly articulated acts of writing, inimical to displays of literary celebrity. Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:09:18 GMT 2009-07-09T06:09:25Z The German surrender in Europe in May 1945 brought little immediate change to the situation in South-East Asia. US forces under General Douglas MacArthur had liberated almost all the islands of the Philippines in February, and the British under General William Slim were to complete defeat of the Japanese Army in Burma in August, but the enemy still held Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. The northern and western coasts of the huge island of New Guinea also remained in Japanese hands, although the Australians had steadfastly retained control of Port Moresby in the southeast. Complete control of the island lying across air and sea communications to Northern Australia was a logical next step. Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:01:16 GMT 2009-07-09T06:01:17Z Béla Király came to prominence in 1956 as the commander of the Hungarian National Guard during the country’s uprising against Communist and Soviet rule. At the time he attracted less attention than the Prime Minister, Imre Nagy, and the Defence Minister, Pál Maléter, but during the 12 days of the uprising he worked hard to make a coherent security and fighting force out of volatile and disparate groups of Hungarian freedom fighters. He strove also to co-ordinate their activities with those of the army and police, and to organise resistance when Soviet forces re-entered Hungary. Unlike Nagy and Maléter, both of whom were executed in Budapest in 1958, Király escaped from Hungary when the uprising was crushed and became an untiring spokesman for Hungarian causes during his long life in exile in the United States. Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:27:38 GMT 2009-07-09T06:27:38Z Dan Klein Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:25:10 GMT 2009-07-08T06:06:42Z Holding forthright views about the need to resist the Russian military threat through the deployment of nuclear weapons, Lord Blaker served as a Conservative MP and a junior government minister for foreign affairs and defence under Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher. As a minister Blaker was closely involved in the negotiations that led to the creation of Zimbabwe in 1980. Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:19:03 GMT 2009-07-08T05:48:43Z Dan Klein Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:13:39 GMT 2009-07-08T06:51:06Z Saatchi & Saatchi grew through the 1980s to be the biggest name in British advertising. It, and its founders Charles and Maurice, won widespread admiration for its political advertising and the way it helped Margaret Thatcher to power in 1979. In 1987 Saatchi & Saatchi’s confidence was such that it considered launching a takeover bid for Midland Bank. By 1990, however, with debts that were threatening suffocation, the Saatchi company had become closely identified with the economic excesses of Thatcherism. But for the intervention of Robert Louis-Dreyfus it might have become one of its most infamous corporate casualties. Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:02:28 GMT 2009-07-08T06:08:39Z Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem was one of the leading pan-Africanists of his generation. Assuming the mantle of such distinguished predecessors as Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois, he kept alive the dream of unifying Africans and the African diaspora into a global African community. Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:55:59 GMT 2009-07-08T06:07:39Z Kenya Mizukami was a Japanese journalist who edited one of the world’s most widely read newspapers and whose dispatches in the 1950s gave ordinary Japanese an elegantly crafted picture of Europe as it recovered from the Second World War. Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:37:30 GMT 2009-07-07T05:53:19Z Gale Storm was one of the biggest stars of the golden age of American television in the 1950s. Her comedy shows My Little Margie (1952-55) and The Gale Storm Show, aka Oh! Susanna (1956-60), both ran to more than 100 episodes. In a 1953 popularity poll she ranked second behind the celebrated Lucille Ball. Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:34:24 GMT 2009-07-07T05:46:44Z Volunteering for the RAF at 17 when the Second World War broke out, Leonard Feltham was a Spitfire pilot throughout most of his wartime service. He flew sorties over France, including the air cover for the Dieppe Raid of 1942; he escorted USAAF bombers on their raids over occupied Europe; he took part in ground attack and air defence operations in support of Montgomery’s victorious Eighth Army as it pursued Axis forces towards Tunis; and he flew tactical air strikes against German ground forces from a base in Normandy after the D-Day landings. At the end of the war, by which time he was serving in the Far East theatre, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:31:41 GMT 2009-07-07T05:46:25Z After 14 months on convoy escorts in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Australian naval officer Max Shean volunteered for service in midget submarines, which the Royal Navy had developed as a means of attacking enemy ships in the safety of their harbours. Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:29:00 GMT 2009-07-07T05:46:15Z Shi Pei Pu was a Beijing opera singer and librettist whose 20-year affair with a French embassy employee created the sex-and-espionage scandal which inspired David Henry Hwang to dramatise his remarkable life story in the play, and film, M. Butterfly. Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:23:10 GMT 2009-07-06T05:56:43Z Joan Rice was a writer whose abilities became apparent to a significant audience only when she reached her late eighties, when her Second World War diaries were published by HarperCollins in 2006. Sand in My Shoes — also the name of a popular wartime song — is an account of her service in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force based on diaries that she kept at the time. “We weren’t supposed to keep diaries, so it was rather naughty. But everyone did,” she said. Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:18:16 GMT 2009-07-06T05:56:07Z It is unusual for a gentleman to change his name on marriage to that of his wife. But very little about Humphrey Drummond and his colourful life was usual. Born Humphrey ap Evans, of Welsh descent, he acquired the name of his wife, Cherry Drummond of Megginch, by decree of the Lord Lyon King of Arms, taking on not only the inheritance of an old and distinguished Scottish family, but also a fine, if crumbling, castle in Perthshire. Thereafter he devoted himself to both, filling Megginch Castle with antiques, notably a collection of Victorian penny-in-the-slot organs, as well as hunting dogs of various breeds, with whom he indulged his favourite sport of falconry.