When I was appointed to the role of director of the Richard Attenborough Centre in 2005, while excited about the new job, I assumed that the founding patron Lord Attenborough would just be a name on our…
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Articles on Obituary
Displaying 201 - 220 of 224 articles
She was 19 when she began work on To Have and Have Not, directed by the seasoned and successful Howard Hawks from a Hemingway story. Delivering a husky-voiced duet with Hoagy Carmichael, she glances across…
American actor and stand-up comedian Robin Williams has died today, aged 63. Barack Obama posted a statement about his death and noted, in a rather odd turn of phrase, that “he arrived in our lives as…
By now you’ll be aware that the legendary soul singer Bobby Womack died on Friday, aged 70. As with the death of many cultural “greats”, social media and traditional media have been united in singing his…
Musicians often have curious minds, and the pianist and composer Horace Silver was no exception. An often overlooked musician in the public eye, Silver wrote some of the most performed jazz standards of…
The untimely death of me old mucker Rik Mayall last week has prompted a plethora of obituaries in the press and on television and radio. However, as someone who “nearly” grew up with Rik at Manchester…
In the cult 1980s sitcom The Young Ones, lefty sociology student Rick, threatens to commit suicide and berates his fellow housemates: I feel sorry for you, you zeroes, you nobodies. What’s going to live…
Rik Mayall is putrid – absolutely vile. He thinks nose-picking is funny and farting and all that. He is the arsehole of British comedy. Spike Milligan made this rather pithy statement some time ago (the…
You may write me down in history With your bitter twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. So begins one of Maya Angelou’s poems, written in 1978. One of her most…
One of the many quotes from Maya Angelou that people are sharing on this day of her home coming is: I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will…
Maya Angelou has died. The world has rushed to decide on what to call her, on how to calculate her immeasurable legacy. The list of nouns applying to her career is endless: memoirist, activist, hip-hop…
The news that Louise Wilson has died held particular force for me, as someone who worked with her for ten years. She was the head of MA fashion at Central Saint Martins School of Art (CSM), and someone…
The world has plenty of monsters – more than enough, really. Several thousand years of art and literature and nightmares have provided us all the terrifying beings we could ever need. Maybe this is why…
Almost all of the reflections and eulogies of Colin Pillinger, who passed away on May 8, will focus on his role in the Beagle 2 space mission to Mars. But this only occupied a small part of his career…
Bob Hoskins, who died on April 29, was a distinct presence in every film in which he featured. Extraordinarily versatile, he excelled as charming everyman, murderous gangster, sympathetic loser or manipulative…
This morning I woke up, rolled over and, as I always do, scrolled through my twitter feed. Owen Jones – a British socialist – tweeted his shock that Peaches Geldolf, 25, had died. I immediately checked…
Mickey Rooney, the Hollywood star who found fame while still a teenager, has died aged 93. Rooney’s passing comes only months after that of fellow child star Shirley Temple. Like Temple, Rooney was the…
A few years ago a student of mine turned up to class wearing a T-shirt that had Kurt Cobain’s suicide note printed on it. I recognised it straight away - I suspect many people around my age spent a period…
Bob Crow, the pugnacious General Secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT), has died at the age of 52 after suffering an aneurysm and a massive heart attack. His passing has brought…
American actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has been found dead in the bathroom of his Greenwich Village Apartment, apparently following a heroin overdose. When we first saw him, bounding up to Marky Mark at…
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Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney
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Associate professor, Music Industry, RMIT University
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Lecturer in the Sociology of Gender, Macquarie University
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Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
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Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide
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Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith University
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Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
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Senior Lecturer in American Studies, University of Sydney
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Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Head of Film, University of Southampton
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Leader, Complex Systems Science, CSIRO
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Joanna Mendelssohn is a Friend of The Conversation.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
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Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Environment; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO
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Bizot Family Professor of History, University of Memphis
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Honorary Senior Lecturer, Australian National University
