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…
We Shall Overcome became the theme song of the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. It is most identified with Pete Seeger, the great American musician who died January 27. Yet as Arlo Guthrie…
To his critics he will forever be the “Butcher of Beirut”, the master of Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the man responsible for the horrendous massacre of hundreds of Palestinians…
This week Fred Sanger died at the age of 95. His name is probably unfamiliar to most, but he is considered one of the greatest chemists of our age. He is the only person to have won two Nobel prizes for…
The writer and critic Margaret Drabble recently made an observation that I think is representative of the diverse and prolific career of the British author Doris Lessing, who died last night at 94: She…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne