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…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Obituary
Displaying 221 - 238 of 238 articles
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…
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…
Top contributors
-
Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide
-
Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney
-
Associate Professor, Music Industry, RMIT University
-
Lecturer in the Sociology of Gender, Macquarie University
-
Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
-
Honorary Senior Lecturer, Australian National University
-
Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Environment; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO
-
Associate Professor in Voice, Opera and Stagecraft, Director Music Theatre, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney
-
Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith University
-
Chancellor and Professor of English, Indiana University Kokomo
-
Leader, Complex Systems Science, CSIRO
-
Head of Film, University of Southampton
-
Honorary Senior Fellow, School of Culture and Communication. Editor in chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
-
Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
-
Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
