Singer, actress Kaye Stevens dies in Florida

• In this Jan. 6, 1967 file photo, Sammy Davis Jr. and Kaye Stevens perform on a TV show. Stevens a singer, actress, and longtime South Florida resident who was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show," has died at a central Florida hospital. She was 79.

Singer and actress Kaye Stevens, who performed with the Rat Pack and was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show," has died at a central Florida hospital. She was 79.
Close friend Gerry Schweitzer confirmed that Stevens died Wednesday at the Villages Hospital north of Orlando following a battle with breast cancer and blood clots.
Stevens, a longtime South Florida resident, performed with Rat Pack members including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop. She also sang solo at venues like Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and the Plaza Hotel's Persian Room in New York City.
During the Vietnam War era, Stevens performed for American soldiers in the war zone with Bob Hope's USO tour.
According to a handout from friend Rhonda Glenn, Stevens was born Catherine Louise Stephens in Pittsburgh. Her family eventually moved to Cleveland, where a teenage Stevens got her start as a drummer and singer. She later married now deceased bandleader and trumpet player Tommy Amato, and the couple performed throughout the eastern U.S.
During a gig in New Jersey, Stevens was discovered by Ed McMahon, Carson's longtime sidekick, which led to new bookings. Her big break came when she was playing a lounge at The Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. Debbie Reynolds became ill and was unable to perform in the main room. Stevens filled in and was an instant hit.
Besides singing, Stevens also acted in film and television. She appeared in six movies, earning a Golden Globe nomination in 1964 for "The New Interns." She was a regular celebrity player on game shows and appeared as a regular on "Days of Our Lives" from 1974-79.
During the past two decades, Stevens started her own ministry and began performing only Christian and patriotic music. She staged benefits to help build St. Vincent Catholic Church in her longtime home of Margate, Fla., where city officials named a park in her honor.

'Tarzan's chimpanzee' Cheetah dies aged 80 in Florida

Cheetah was known for his fun nature

A chimpanzee who apparently starred in Tarzan films in the 1930s has died at the age of 80, according to the sanctuary where he lived.

The Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor said he died on Saturday of kidney failure.
He had acted alongside Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan in Tarzan films from 1932-34, it claimed.
The animal loved fingerpainting and watching football, and was "soothed by Christian music".
Sanctuary spokeswoman Debbie Cobb told the Tampa Tribune that Cheetah came to live at Palm Harbor from Johnny Weissmuller's estate in about 1960.

 

"Cheetah" was in the Tarzan movies alongside Maureen O'Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller, according to the sanctuary where he lived

Chimpanzees in zoos typically live 35 to 45 years, she said.
It is not clear what lay behind Cheetah's longevity, or what evidence there is for it.
A sanctuary volunteer told the paper that fingerpainting was not Cheetah's only talent.
"When he didn't like somebody or something that was going on, he would pick up some poop and throw it at them," Ron Priest said. "He could get you at 30 feet [9m] with bars in between."
The Florida "Cheetah" is not the only chimpanzee who has been described as Tarzan's companion.
A chimp known as "Cheeta" who lives in California was for a long time claimed to be the chimp in the films, but, following research for a biography, that claim has been withdrawn.
It is possible that several different animals were used while filming the Tarzan movies.

Helen Frankenthaler, US abstract expressionist, dies

 

Helen Frankenthaler burst on to the art scene in 1952 with Mountains and Sea

US abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler has died aged 83 after a long illness, her nephew has said.

Clifford Ross told the Associated Press that his aunt passed away on Tuesday at her home in Darien, in the US state of Connecticut.
She burst on to the art scene in 1952 with Mountains and Sea, a large-scale canvas.
The postwar colourist, whose career spanned six decades, was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2002.
Born in 1928 to a wealthy Manhattan family, her father was a New York State Supreme Court judge and her mother a German immigrant.
Breakthrough Frankenthaler was a leading light of the "soak-stain" technique that involves applying thinned oil paint to unprimed canvas, creating a watercolour effect.
Her style is credited with having helped American art make the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting.
Frankenthaler, who was inspired by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, in turn influenced such artists as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.
Pollock's influence was evident in Frankenthaler's preference for large-scale canvases and painting on the floor rather than on easel.
She created her breakthrough work Mountains and Sea - a glowing landscape evocation measuring 7ft by 10ft - when she was just 23, following a trip to Nova Scotia.
Frankenthaler turned to acrylic paints in the 1960s to explore open, flat fields of colour, a style on display in her 1973 work Nature Abhors A Vacuum.
She also worked with ceramics, sculpture, woodcuts, tapestry and printmaking.
In 1958, she wed fellow artist Robert Motherwell, a marriage that would last for 13 years.
She is survived by her second husband, Stephen DuBrul.

Black Panther serial killer Donald Neilson dies in jail

Donald Neilson, the serial killer known as the Black Panther, has died in hospital aged 75.

Donald Neilson, the serial killer known as the Black Panther, has died in hospital aged 75. 

Neilson was given four life sentences in 1975 and was one of a small group of notorious prisoners who were told they would spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

The Prison Service said Neilson was rushed to hospital for treatment after developing breathing problems on Saturday but doctors were unable to save him.

"HMP Norwich prisoner Donald Neilson was taken to outside hospital in the early hours of Saturday December 17 with breathing difficulties.

"He was pronounced dead there at approximately 6.45pm on Sunday December 18.

"As with all deaths in custody, the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will conduct an investigation," a Prison Service spokesman said.

In June 2008, a High Court judge ruled the notorious killer must never be released from prison.
Neilson, who murdered heiress Lesley Whittle in 1975 and also shot dead three sub-postmasters during armed robberies, had applied for the setting of a minimum jail term which would have given him a chance of parole.
But Mr Justice Teare, sitting in London, announced that Neilson's "whole life" tariff must remain.
He said: "This is a case where the gravity of the applicant's offences justifies a whole life order."
The judge rejected argument on behalf of Neilson, who was sentenced to four terms of life imprisonment at Oxford Crown Court in 1976, that the sentencing "starting point" should be one of 30 years.
Neilson, a jobbing builder, kidnapped 17-year-old Lesley Whittle from her home in Shropshire, leaving a ransom demand for £50,000.
Her body was later found in an underground drainage system hanging from the bottom of a ladder to which Neilson had secured her by the neck with wire.
Mr Justice Teare said that between February and November 1974, Neilson - who lived in Bradford - "shot and killed three sub-postmasters in the course of armed robberies of their premises".
He added: "The trial judge said that the applicant (Neilson) never set out without a loaded shotgun or other loaded weapon and that he never hesitated to shoot to kill whenever he thought he was in danger of arrest or of detection."
The fourth murder, committed between January 3 and March 7 1975, was that of Lesley Whittle.
Mr Justice Teare said: "The three murders of sub-postmasters involved a substantial degree of premeditation because the applicant took with him a loaded firearm which he was prepared to use.
"They were committed for gain. The victims were particularly vulnerable because of their occupation.
"The manner in which the young girl was killed demonstrates that it too involved a substantial degree of premeditation or planning. It also involved the abduction of the young girl."
The judge said that there "are and were no mitigating features".
Mr Justice Teare added: "The trial judge said that the applicant's sentence of life imprisonment must mean life and that if he ever were released from prison it should only be on account of great age or infirmity."
It was plain from the sentencing remarks of the trial judge that Neilson was "ruthlessly prepared to shoot to kill if he considered such action necessary".
The location and manner of Lesley Whittle's death "indicates that she must have been subjected by the applicant to a dreadful and horrific ordeal", he added.

On The Buses writer Ronnie Wolfe dies

Ronnie Wolfe, the writer of TV sitcoms including On the Buses, The Rag Trade and Yus, My Dear. 

Ronnie Wolfe, the writer of television sitcom On The Buses, has died after hitting his head in a fall, his son-in-law said.

Mr Wolfe, 89, died on Sunday, three days after he fell down the stairs at a respite home in London.
The comedy show was first broadcast from 1969 to 1973 on LWT and ran for four series.
Arif Hussein, the husband of Mr Wolfe's daughter Kathryn, said his father-in-law was "absolutely wonderful".
"He was the kind of father-in-law most people dream about, absolutely.
"Most people talk about their in-laws as people who are interfering, but to me my in-laws were a dream.
"Ronnie was from day one, he was absolutely wonderful."
On the Buses was set in a bus depot, and was initially rejected by the BBC before finding a home at LWT and becoming hugely popular.
Its stars included Reg Varney, who played driver Stan Butler, and Stephen Lewis as Inspector Cyril "Blakey" Blake.
Mr Wolfe created dozens of comedies with writing partner Ronald Chesney - the pair were known as The Other Two Ronnies. Their work included the BBC hit The Rag Trade, which also starred Varney.
Mr Chesney said: "We were together 50 years - it's like losing my brother."
Mr Wolfe also worked with many of the best-known actors of the era, including Kenneth Williams, Barbara Windsor, Sheila Hancock, Beryl Reid, Thora Hird and Benny Hill.
His wife Rose said it had been a sad end.
"It has been a really, really sad last few days and a quite horrendous and totally unexpectedly sad end for a guy who was so funny in life," she said.
"He was the most incredible husband and we had 58 years of superb marriage harmony."
The couple have two daughters. The eldest, Kathryn, said she could not have wished for a better father: "He was funny in public with the huge legacy left behind and funny in private."

Vaclav Havel, Czech leader and playwright, dies at 75

 

Vaclav Havel, the Czech Republic's first president after the Velvet Revolution against communist rule, has died at the age of 75.

The former dissident playwright, who suffered from prolonged ill-health, died on Sunday morning, his secretary Sabina Tancecova said.
As president, he presided over Czechoslovakia's transition to democracy and a free-market economy.
He oversaw its peaceful 1993 split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Havel first came to international fame as a dissident playwright in the 1970s through his involvement with the human rights manifesto Charter 77.
'Great European' A black flag has been flying over Prague Castle, the presidential seat, and people have been gathering in Wenceslas Square, scene of anti-communist protests in 1989, to light candles in honour of Havel.
The Czech cabinet is to meet for a special session on Monday to consider arrangements for national mourning.
Tributes have been pouring in for the man many consider a driving force in the overthrow of communist rule in eastern Europe.
"His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon," said US President Barack Obama.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed Havel as a "great European" in a letter of condolence to Czech President Vaclav Klaus.

It was clear to all who saw him in recent months that Vaclav Havel was not in the best of health.
He cut a gaunt, shrunken figure at the handful of public appearances he attended in Prague, most recently a meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
Nonetheless his death has come as a shock, and politicians and many others have been paying their respects to the man who, in the words of his successor, Vaclav Klaus, "was a symbol of the Czech state".
Miroslava Nemcova, speaker of the lower house, said her country had "lost its moral authority." Similar tributes have been pouring in from all over the world. For once, those words do not sound like cliches.
Within hours of the announcement of his death people began lighting candles and laying flowers at the statue of St Wenceslas on Wenceslas Square, where Havel addressed huge crowds of demonstrators in November 1989.
A black flag has been raised in mourning above Prague Castle. Church bells across the country will ring out to mark the death of a man who lived by a naive, but simple motto - "truth and love will prevail over lies and hatred".

"His fight for freedom and democracy was as unforgettable as his great humanity," wrote Mrs Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany.

"We Germans in particular have much for which we are grateful to him. We mourn this loss of a great European with you," she wrote.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "deeply saddened" and that Europe owed Havel a "profound debt".
"Havel devoted his life to the cause of human freedom. For years, Communism tried to crush him, and to extinguish his voice. But Havel could not be silenced.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter: "Vaclav Havel was one of the greatest Europeans of our age. His voice for freedom paved way for a Europe whole and free."
Chronic ill-health Havel died at his country home north-east of Prague.
In his final moments, he was comforted by his wife Dagmar and several nuns, his secretary was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.
Havel had looked thin and drawn during recent public appearances.
A former heavy smoker, Havel had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist prisons.
He had part of a lung removed during surgery for cancer in the 1990s.
He was taken to hospital in Prague on 12 January 2009, with an unspecified inflammation, and developed breathing difficulties after undergoing minor throat surgery.
Satirist Havel began co-writing plays during his military service in the 1950s and his first solo play, The Garden Party, was staged in 1963.

Vaclav Havel

• Born in 1936 to a wealthy family in Czechoslovakia
• Considered "too bourgeois" by communist government, studied at night school
• Writing banned and plays forced underground after the 1968 Prague Spring
• In 1977, co-authored the Charter 77 movement for democratic change
• Faced constant harassment and imprisonment as Czechoslovakia's most famous dissident
• Czechoslovakia's first post-communist president in December 1989
• Oversaw transition to democracy, and 1993 division into the Czech Republic and Slovakia
• Left office in 2003 and continued writing, publishing a new play in 2008 and directing first film in 2011

• 
  

His plays satirised the absurdities of life under communist rule, but his work was banned after the reformist Prague Spring of 1968 was crushed by a Soviet-led invasion.

After that his plays were banned and he was imprisoned several times.
By the late 1970s he had become Czechoslovakia's best-known dissident. He helped found the Charter 77 movement for democratic change.
When communist rule unravelled in late 1989, he was elected president by the interim coalition cabinet. He resigned in 1992 after Slovak nationalists successfully campaigned for the break-up of Czechoslovakia.
He was elected first president of the Czech Republic in January 1993, serving until 2003 when he resigned as his health deteriorated.
Havel returned to literature and to supporting human rights activists around the world.

Alan Sues

Alan Sues, who has died aged 85, was best known to British television audiences for his cameo roles in the hit comedy Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, in which he played an assortment of camp, zany characters.

From 1968 to 1972, Sues was a recurring cast member on Laugh-In, playing an eccentric children's entertainer named Uncle Al (the Kiddies' Pal) and an effeminate sportscaster called Big Al.

Alan Sues

As cross-eyed Big Al, Sues delivered regular "Sports Scene updates" throughout each show, one of a huge cast of recurring characters in what the British television historian Mark Lewisohn characterised as "an anything goes, scatological mishmash of quick-fire gags, micro-sketches, corn, puns, satire and slapstick".

Sues's Big Al seemed more concerned with ringing a bell that he called his "tinkle" than announcing the day's sports action. His Uncle Al children's host was invariably hung-over, and he also did a drag imitation of another cast member, Jo Anne Worley.

Although it became a top-rated show in the United States, it did less well in Britain, where it was shown on Sunday nights on BBC Two between 1968 and 1971.

None the less it gathered a cult following, with regular viewers trading its trove of catchphrases such as "Sock it to me" and the more mystifying "You bet your sweet bippy". The show satirised the 1960s counterculture and featured celebrity guests like Diana Ross as well as public figures such as the Rev Billy Graham and Richard Nixon, who, appearing during his presidential campaign and trying to cast off his humourless image, drew both laughs and gasps when he asked: "Sock it to me?"

Sues tended to perform in an over-the-top, flamboyant way, affecting stereotypically gay mannerisms. In fact, he was gay in real life, but fretted that his sexual orientation might damage his career.
In the United States Sues was also known for his role as a clumsy and outrageously flamboyant Peter Pan on peanut butter commercials.
Alan Grigsby Sues was born on March 7 1926 in Ross, California. His father bred racehorses, which meant frequent moves and changes of school for Alan and his brother, John. Alan served in the US Army in Europe during the Second World War.
His demob benefits paid for acting lessons at the Pasadena Playhouse, and he performed there before moving to New York in 1952. He made his Broadway debut the following year in Elia Kazan's Tea and Sympathy. During the play's run he met and married Phyllis Gehrig, a dancer and actress.
When the production ended in 1955, Sues and his wife devised a nightclub act which they toured nationwide. Vaudevillian-style characters which Sues developed for this act would later resurface in Laugh-In.
After the couple's divorce in the late 1950s, Sues settled in California, picking up regular acting work in films and television. He was cast for Laugh-In by the producer George Schlatter, who saw him and Jo Anne Worley in an off Broadway musical comedy revue, The Mad Show.
After Laugh-In, Sues performed on Broadway in the 1970s, as Professor Moriarty in the Royal Shakespeare Company's revival of William Gillette's play Sherlock Holmes.

Alan Sues, born March 7 1926, died December 1 2011

Roy Tattersall

Roy Tattersall, who has died aged 89, enjoyed many triumphs bowling off-spin for Lancashire and England, none greater than that at Lord’s in 1951 when he skittled South Africa with figures of seven for 52 and five for 49.

Roy Tattersall bowling for Lancashire County Cricket Club in 1960

He had already established an ascendancy over the tourists when playing for MCC at Lord’s the month before, bundling them out for under 200 as he took eight for 51. Now, in the second Test, “Tatters” was quick to sum up the kind of attack required on the rain-affected wicket. Coming in off his curving run, he delivered his off-breaks — off-cutters, really, that day — at close to medium pace, forcing the South African batsmen into giving chances to the cluster of short legs.

Tattersall was unusually tall for an off-spinner, and had indeed begun his career as a seamer. One writer described him as a “lanky beanpole”; the perfectly groomed hair, however, dispelled any hint of disorder or indiscipline.

A highly intelligent bowler, he was always ready to vary his bowling to suit the conditions and his opponents. Batsmen who played for the off-break or off-cutter would suddenly find themselves confounded by a ball that floated away from the bat. Yet his subtle variations of pace and spin never compromised his accuracy.

Playing against India at Kanpur in 1952, he came on at 39 for no wicket. Within minutes the score read 39 for three as his second, sixth and eighth balls disposed of Mankad, Umrigar and Hazare — all batsmen of the highest quality. His final haul of six for 42 set up a rare England victory in India.

For Lancashire, Tattersall produced many devastating performances, but none so dramatic as in the match against Nottinghamshire in 1953, when he took seven wickets in 19 deliveries without conceding a single run. A number of dropped catches meant that the nine wickets with which he finished the innings cost him 40 runs; even so, this was the best analysis of his career. And in Nottinghamshire’s second innings he took five for 33.

Every season between 1950 and 1957 Tattersall exceeded 100 wickets, and generally he finished near the top of the first-class averages. It might seem odd, therefore, that he played only 15 times for England. Part of the reason, perhaps, is to be found in his withdrawn and introverted character, which cringed at the extrovert heartiness of team-mates and shrank from self-promotion.
There was, however, a better reason for the selectors so often ignoring Tattersall: he had the misfortune to be only six months younger than Jim Laker, the greatest of all England off-spinners.
Roy Tattersall was born at Tonge Moor, Bolton, on August 17 1922, and began to make his mark as a cricketer with Tonge and Bradshaw in the Bolton League. He made his debut for Lancashire against Glamorgan in 1948, opening the bowling with Dick Pollard and taking a wicket with his fourth ball.
It was Harry Makepeace, the Lancashire coach, who persuaded him to become an off-spinner, and in 1950, his first full season, he took 193 wickets at an average of 13.59, figures which placed him at the top of the first-class bowling averages for that season. It was as dramatic an arrival to pre-eminence as that of Bob Appleyard the next summer.
When injuries afflicted MCC in Australia in the winter of 1950-51, Tattersall and Brain Statham were flown out to the rescue. After only two games to accustom himself to the heat, Tattersall made his Test debut at Adelaide in February 1951, bowling with admirable persistence and accuracy on an easy-paced batting wicket.
In the next Test, at Melbourne, Tattersall — who batted left-handed without any pretensions to skill — managed to stay in for an hour while Reg Simpson murdered the bowling. Their last wicket stand put on 74, with Simpson taking his score from 92 to 156 not out, and Tattersall mustering 10 before being bowled by Keith Miller. England thus gained a handsome first innings lead, and went on to their first victory over Australia since 1938.
In the ensuing tour of New Zealand, Tattersall found his best bowling form, and in the second Test at Wellington, in bitterly cold conditions, took six for 44 in New Zealand’s second innings.
Back home again, he played in all five Tests against South Africa in 1951. It was noticeable, however, that despite Tattersall’s fine performance at Lord’s, he was hardly used as Jim Laker dominated South Africa’s batsmen at the Oval.
Laker, however, did not go with Tattersall to India in 1951-52. While Tattersall, never a vicious spinner of the ball, found that he could not get much turn from the Indian pitches, he was able to make up for that with clever variations in flight and pace which brought him 21 wickets in the Tests at 28.33 apiece.
Nevertheless, he found no place in the Test side when India toured England in 1952. By contrast, in 1953 he began the season in such fine form that he was preferred to Laker for the first Test against Australia at Trent Bridge. He bowled tidily enough, and took three cheap wickets in Australia’s second innings, only to be dropped for the rest of the series.
Tattersall felt that he never really gained the confidence of Len Hutton, who had been appointed captain of England in 1952. “He’d take you off too soon,” Tattersall recalled, “often after only four or five overs when you felt you were getting the better of your opponent.”
Tattersall remembered how Hutton had approached him during one such short spell: “What’s the matter? Are you tired?” “I thought I’d play him at his own mocking game,” Tattersall recalled. “I think you’re right, Len,” he told his skipper, “I do feel b******d.” The wry smile with which Hutton received this sally gave nothing away; Tattersall, however, played only once more for England, against Pakistan at Lord’s in 1954.
Altogether he took 58 wickets in Test cricket at an average of 26.08. As a Test batsman he scored 50 runs at an average of 5.00.
For a few more seasons he remained a formidable bowler for Lancashire, and in 1956 had the satisfaction of taking eight for 36 against Yorkshire. But that year, when he was lying third in the national bowling averages, and vying with Don Shepherd to be the first that summer to reach 100 wickets, he was suddenly dropped by Lancashire. “Why?” he demanded. “Ours is not to reason why,” the Lancashire coach Stan Worthington replied.
Though Tattersall would take 135 wickets in 1957 and 94 in 1958, he never really felt secure again. In 1959 he lost form completely and was allowed to bowl only 57 overs for Lancashire in the entire season.
In 1960 he shared a benefit — the Roses match against Yorkshire over the August Bank Holiday — with his fellow-spinner Malcolm Hilton. A crowd of 34,000 turned up for the first day, but the Lancashire selectors were not sentimental: both Tattersall and Hilton were playing for Lancashire Second XI at Scarborough. It was left to a team-mate to inform them by telegram of the vast crowd at Old Trafford: “Your prayers are answered.”
The benefit raised £11,655. But Tattersall had had enough: “I couldn’t live off second team money. I was 38 when I finished, but I could have gone on for three or four more years.” As it was, he ended his 328 first-class matches (277 for Lancashire) with the highly impressive record of 1,369 wickets at an average of 18.03. He took five or more wickets in an innings no fewer than 99 times, and 10 or more wickets in a match on 18 occasions. As a batsman he scored 2,040 runs at an average of 9.35.
Tattersall left Lancashire in 1960 and moved to the Birmingham area, where he worked for a carpet manufacturer. He also played for Kidderminster in the Birmingham Central League .
He is survived by his wife, Phyllis, and their daughters.

Roy Tattersall, born August 17 1922, died December 9 2011

Peter Lunn

Peter Lunn, who has died aged 97, captained the British skiing team at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen; later, as a gentleman spy in the early Cold War years, he pioneered the idea of digging tunnels under Soviet-controlled zones to facilitate telephone tapping.

Peter Lunn (third left) with members of the 1936 British skiing team in Murren  

Peter Northcote Lunn was born on November 15 1914 into British skiing aristocracy. His grandfather, Sir Henry Lunn, was a one-time missionary who, having failed to convert the Indians to Methodism, moved to Switzerland, where he embarked on encouraging the British to ski. To this end, he established The Public Schools Alpine Sports Club which, by offering hotel accommodation near the mountains, was the precursor of the ski travel business.

On one occasion Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came to stay with Sir Henry in Switzerland, and told him that he had decided to devote his life to psychic research but couldn’t think what to do with Sherlock Holmes. As Peter later told the story: “My grandfather said 'Push him over the Reichenbach Falls’, and Conan Doyle hadn’t heard of them so he showed them to him.”

In time, Henry’s operation became the travel agency Lunn Poly. Peter’s father, meanwhile, Sir Arnold Lunn, is today revered as the father of downhill skiing because, from his base at the Palace Hotel, Mürren, he spent decades campaigning (against stiff opposition) to get downhill and slalom racing recognised as International Ski Federation and Olympic events.

Peter first skied at Mürren a few days before his second birthday and, as he recalled, soon “felt ashamed if I spent a day without falling. It meant I hadn’t been trying hard enough.” He won his first skiing prize soon after his father set the first modern slalom at Mürren in 1922.

“It’s now accepted as so obvious that the thing to do is ski downhill that people find it difficult to think there was ever opposition,” he recalled. “They used to say that downhill was for people too cowardly to jump and too feeble to do cross-country.” When a German named Luther told his father that downhill was “an awful bore”, Peter recalled that Sir Arnold took him up the mountain, watched him standing petrified at the top, then drily observed: “Here stands Luther, he can do no other.”

Peter also remembered the foundation of Mürren’s British ski racing club, the Kandahar, in 1924. (Its motto, “Sicut Sagitta a Sagittate”, roughly translates as “don’t turn unless you have to”.) But he was away at Eton in January 1928 when 18 of the club’s skiers pioneered the Inferno, a 10-mile up-and-downhill marathon which has come to be regarded as one of the most gruelling races in the world.
Arnold Lunn’s campaigning bore fruit with the inclusion for the first time of downhill and slalom racing at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Bavaria, where Peter captained the British team. The Lunns escaped the opprobrium heaped on the British team after the Olympic march past (when an overexcited German commentator mistook their Olympic salute, with the arm raised sideways as opposed to forwards, for the Nazi salute), as they had refused to attend the ceremony — though Peter claimed that the credit was undeserved: “I didn’t go to the march past [because] I don’t like marching about.”
On the ski-slopes, meanwhile, he came a disappointing 15th: “I skied too carefully,” he recalled. “It was the only major international downhill race in which I failed to fall.” He was much prouder of the ninth place he achieved after three falls in the infamous Innsbruck downhill of the same year (when spectators, appalled by the crashes they had seen on a rock-strewn icefield, invaded the course in an attempt to slow the skiers down): “At every corner people were waving and yelling at us to slow down, 'Langsamer! Langsamer!’ — but you couldn’t go any bloody langsamer!”
Following the outbreak of war in 1939, Lunn was commissioned into the Royal Artillery but was soon seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). He spent most of the war years in Malta, where ostensibly he worked for the British Council and endured the bombing that led to the island’s award of the George Cross. In a later article he compared the feelings of a downhill racer before the start with those of somebody caught in a heavy bombardment.
In 1945 he was posted to Italy, where he took a parachute course, an activity which he described as an activity providing “maximum fright with minimal risk”.
After the war Lunn was posted as head of the MI6 station in the divided city of Vienna, with the official title of Second Secretary at the British embassy. Though he was once described by the espionage writer Richard CS Trahair as having a “slight build and blue eyes” and speaking “in a soft voice with a lisp”, every inch the gentleman spy, he also had a razor-sharp mind.
In 1948 Graham Greene, who had also worked for SIS, went to Vienna to research material for the screenplay of The Third Man (1949). He discovered the existence of a force policing a vast network of sewers under the city which allowed agents to pass from one zone of occupation to another.
Lunn too was interested in the city’s subterranean world. According to David Stafford, in his book Spies Beneath Berlin, Lunn realised that “cables linking the Red Army to Soviet units in Austria ran through the British and French sectors [of Vienna]”. If he could tap these communications, “he would be the first to know if Stalin gave the order to invade Western Europe”.
After winning over his superiors in London, he recruited a team of experts — including a private mining consultant — to build at least three tunnels which would enable him to tap into the underground cables which the Soviets used to communicate. He even bought a villa on the route of the cable that linked the Soviet headquarters in Vienna with the city’s airport and its overall command station for Austria at St Pölten. From the villa, his team could excavate undisturbed.
Operation Conflict, as Lunn’s eavesdropping scheme was known, yielded a wealth of intelligence about Soviet operations in Eastern Europe between 1948 and 1951.
It was not a glamorous undertaking. When an SIS officer arrived in the city, Lunn greeted him: “So now you’re in Vienna you think it’s going to be all wine, women and song. Well, let me tell you, old boy, it’s all beer, bitches and broadcasting.”
After a posting in Berne, in mid-1953 Lunn was named MI6 section chief in Berlin at a time when intelligence gathering was being hampered due to the Soviet shift from radio to landline. When the American defence secretary George Marshall declared “I don’t care what it takes, all I want is 24 hours’ notice of a Soviet attack”, Lunn suggested that they should try the same tunnel trick again.
Winston Churchill, then prime minister, had been informed of the success of the Vienna tunnels. Now, he personally authorised Lunn to undertake something similar in Berlin. The Berlin tunnel, which extended hundreds of yards into the East German side, was built mainly by the CIA and was a much more elaborate affair than the Vienna prototype (in Vienna, Lunn had kept his tunnelling operation secret from the Americans.)
SIS was responsible for the critical final phase of the operation — placing the tap itself. When the first successful tap was made in May 1955, the message sent to Washington was: “The baby is born”. But its usefulness was short-lived. On the night of 21/22 April the next year, the Soviets “discovered” the tunnel (having being tipped off, as it later emerged, by the British traitor George Blake, whom Lunn had considered his best agent-runner). None the less, the intelligence gathered during the time that it was operational was so great that processing the backlog continued until 1958.
Lunn’s KGB counterparts, who had spent years observing him in action, described him as “demanding” of the agents he ran.
He went on to serve as head of station in Bonn, and during the 1960s in Beirut, where he enjoyed skiing at The Cedars, a resort where, as he recalled, discipline in the lift queues improved dramatically after an attendant shot dead the two worst queue jumpers. Even so, it was “not so stimulating as Mürren”, and throughout his years in the service he always brought his family to Mürren for a month at Christmas.
Lunn described himself as a “skiing glutton” and he preferred to ski fast, off-piste and alone. When one interviewer asked a Mürren lift operator where to find him, he was told to “look for crazy tracks in the deep snow”.
After retiring in 1986 Lunn spent every winter in Mürren and continued to ski even after a car crash in 1985 that left him with double vision from a collapsed eye socket and knees so badly broken that doctors predicted he would never walk again. Every year after his retirement he participated in the Inferno race until he broke his hip in another car accident at the age of 90. Even that did not stop him, and he continued to ski regularly until last year.
The author of several technical books about skiing, in 1947 Lunn published a novel, Evil in High Places, about a psychotic mountaineer.
Peter Lunn was appointed OBE in 1951 and CMG in 1957.
He married, in 1939, Antoinette Preston, daughter of the 15th Viscount Gormanston. She died in 1976, and he is survived by his partner, Christa Palmer, and by two sons and two daughters. Another son and daughter predeceased him.

Peter Lunn, born November 15 1914, died November 30 2011

Socrates

Socrates, the footballer, who has died aged 57, captained a Brazilian side whose skill and showmanship delighted fans everywhere; the team did not win a World Cup, but it’s unwavering commitment to the philosophy of the joga bonito – the beautiful game – is regarded by many as a greater achievement.

Socrates (right) in action against Argentina during the 1982 World Cup 

It was a style driven by the team’s tall, languid, bearded skipper, who often seemed to operate at walking pace, so comfortable was he on the ball. In fact, the flowing attacks he orchestrated from midfield were launched at lightning speed with deft flicks and piercing through balls delivered with either foot. The understanding he developed with the other celebrated names of Brazil’s 1982 World Cup team – Junior, Falcao, Zico, Eder, Serginho – appeared telepathic. Passes were played without looking, and unerringly found their target. Socrates was so adept at the back-heel that Pele once remarked that he could play better going backwards than most players could going forwards.

He had an eye for goal too, scoring 22 times in his 60 appearances for the national team. But above all Socrates treated football as a game, to be enjoyed. “Is that why you have come all this way? To discover whether it is more important to win or to play beautiful football?” he recently asked a British journalist who had travelled to Brazil to meet him. “Beauty comes first. Victory is secondary. What matters is joy.”

Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira was born on February 19 1954 in Belem do Para, northern Brazil. His father enjoyed reading Greek literature and named the boy after the philosopher. “Just to show that there could be no confusion he insisted on adding Brasileiro (Brazilian),” the footballer recalled later.

When Socrates was a child his family moved to Ribeirao Preto in the state of Sao Paulo, where in 1974 he eventually joined the local club, Botafogo. As if to underscore his unusually casual attitude to the game that dominates so many lives in Brazil, he refused to commit himself full-time to the club until he had completed his degree in Medicine at the local university.

Such was his talent, however, that Botafogo allowed him to skip training sessions to finish his studies, and soon he became both a qualified doctor and the team’s star player, notching up 24 goals in 57 appearances.

By 1978 he had turned professional and joined Corinthians, the club in Sao Paulo which – along with Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo – dominates football in Brazil. At the time the country was ruled by a military dictatorship, and Corinthians had a reputation as a centre of democratic opposition, acquiring influence and significance that stretched well beyond the pitch. This manifested itself in the movement known as Democracia Corinthiana, in which the club’s directors, staff and players all had a vote to settle any decision of significance.
It was an obviously political organisation, and Socrates (a self-confessed idealist who named one of his six children Fidel) was at its heart.
He played for Corinthians for six years, until 1984, making 297 appearances and scoring 172 goals during a spell in which the club was champions three times. Even then, however, victory was not paramount. Sometimes the team took to the field carrying placards emblazoned with such messages as: “Direct elections now”. One poster of the squad carried the slogan: “Democracy: Winning the championship is a minor detail.”
With his long, flowing locks, headband and wispy beard, backed up by outrageous skill on the ball, Socrates was an embodiment of rebel chic. But his rebelliousness also took a toll on his health, and he demonstrated as significant a commitment to beer and cigarettes as he did to his political ideals.
It is a testament to his physical power that such indulgence had no discernible impact on his performances on the pitch. He started playing for the national team in 1979, making his debut in a 6-0 win against Paraguay, and by 1982 was captain of a group of players considered as worthy of pulling on the golden shirt as the constellation of stars which had gathered around Pele in 1970.
Like the 1970 team, the Socrates-led squad that headed to the 1982 World Cup in Spain was determined to win with attacking firepower and flair; no matter how many goals the opposition might score, Brazil was certain it could score more.
It was a devil-may-care attitude that almost saw the side lose its first game, against the USSR. After going behind in the first half, however, Brazil came back to win the game with two of the goals of the tournament. With 15 minutes remaining, Socrates collected a Soviet clearance 40 yards from goal. Skipping over one potentially leg-breaking challenge, he feinted past another defender before unleashing a right-footed shot from 25 yards into the top left-hand corner. Then, with two minutes of the game remaining, Eder flicked up a cross field pass and volleyed the ball into the net from a similar distance; in neither case did the Soviet keeper move.
It was a win which established the Brazilian players’ credentials as the showmen of the competition, a reputation which they fully justified in their second match, against Scotland. Despite again conceding the first goal, Brazil roared back, attacking from all positions on the pitch to bamboozle a defence which included Alan Hansen. They finished 4-1 winners, completing their group by demolishing New Zealand 4-0.
At the time the format of the World Cup format included a further group stage; the two other sides in Brazil’s second group were Italy and Argentina, with only the top team qualifying. After Argentina lost both of its games, a spot in the semi-finals was down to a decider between Italy and Brazil.
Paolo Rossi put the Italians ahead after five minutes, but seven minutes later Brazil, with their talismanic captain running midfield, drew level. Picking up the ball in his own half, Socrates drilled a pass forward to Zico, marked closely and brutally by the Italian defender Claudio Gentile. Dragging the ball back swiftly with his heel, Zico left Gentile flat-footed and then, just as the Italian looked set to make a covering challenge, returned the ball to Socrates, who had continued his run. Despite a tight angle, the Brazilian captain casually struck the ball passed Dino Zoff. As the players celebrated a goal of apparently effortless fluidity and skill, John Motson, commentating, rhapsodised: “It’s there! Socrates! A goal that sums up the philosophy of Brazilian football.”
Paolo Rossi put Italy ahead again, before Falcao equalised for Brazil. Then, following poor marking by the never-formidable Brazilian defence, Rossi got his hat-trick and Italy’s winner. As the referee blew the final whistle, fans were already declaring it one of the greatest games in World Cup history. Likewise, the Brazilian team was soon regarded as the best side not to have won the competition.
Some players, like Falcao, were devastated not to have gone on and won the competition. But, outwardly at least, Socrates was unconcerned. “At least we lost fighting for our ideals,” he noted. “And you can compare that to society today. We have lost touch with humanity, people are driven by results. They used to go to football to see a spectacle. Now, with very few exceptions, they go to watch a war and what matters is who wins. That is why I value the squad for this World Cup – it might just be a team with ideals.”
It was an outlook that shaped the rest of his life. In 1986 he played again in the World Cup, but missed with a lackadaisical penalty in the quarter-finals as Brazil lost to France. By then he had joined Flamengo, following a single miserable season with the Italian club, Fiorentina. But his playing career was rapidly reaching its conclusion and, in 1989, at the age of 35, he retired.
He returned to Ribeirao Preto to practise medicine, but was hardly an exemplar to his patients. He remained devoted to drinking and smoking even as it began to affect his health; while he occasionally promised to limit the drinking, he said that quitting cigarettes was beyond him. “I can’t kick the cigarettes but what can you do? It’s a problem but we all have to die of something, don’t we?”
He spent his off-field years dispensing advice – both sporting and political – in newspaper columns and on television. In 2004 he made a single, widely-publicised appearance for the Northern Counties League side Garforth Town. Coming on with 20 minutes to go, he touched the ball four times, none to any effect.
In recent months he was repeatedly treated in hospital for intestinal bleeding. He is survived by his wife and children.

Socrates, born February 19 1954, died December 4 2011

Ken Russell dies in his sleep

Maverick director, Ken Russell, best known for ‘Women in Love’ and ‘Tommy’, dies aged 84.

Celebrated British film director Ken Russell has died peacefully in his sleep, aged 84, his son Alex has announced.

Russell’s films included ‘Women in Love’, ‘Tommy’ and ‘The Devils’. He found fame with a new generation after appearing in ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ in 2007.

Born in Southampton in 1927, Russell served in the Royal Air Force before moving into television documentaries.

His first film was farce ‘French Dressing’, but his big break was ‘Billion Dollar Brain’ - the sequel to the Michael Caine Harry Palmer spy thriller ‘The Ipcress File’.

The director’s films were often controversial; ‘Women in Love’ featured an infamous scene showing Oliver Reed and Alan Bates wrestling nude.

However it was his most critically lauded effort and earned him an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Director’ and star Glenda Jackson a ‘Best Actress’ Academy Award.

Ken Russell dies aged 84

Religious drama ‘The Devils’, which featured a scene showing Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave sexualising the crucifixion,  also caused an uproar and was initially rejected by the studio.

His biggest commercial success was ‘Tommy’, a trippy rock opera based around the songs of The Who and starring lead singer Roger Daltrey.

His other credits include ‘Lisztomania’, ‘Altered States’, ‘Savage Messiah’ and ‘Crimes of Passion’ and 1991 drama ‘Whore’.

The last film effectively ended Russell’s career as a mainstream film maker, and he fell from the limelight in the 1990s.

He was reduced to making films in his garden starring drama students  - such as 'The Fall of the Louse of Usher: A Gothic Tale for the 21st Century' - but was re-introduced to the public when he appeared in ‘Celebrity Big Brother in 2007.

The series featured the infamous Jade Goody race row, and Russell walked out after four days following arguments with the reality star.
Russell is survived by wife Lisi Tribble and his five children from his first marriage to Shirley Russell.

Wales football manager Gary Speed has died, aged 42

 

Speed said he was satisfied with his first 10 games in charge of Wales

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Wales football manager Gary Speed has died at the age of 42.

The Football Association of Wales (FAW) has said it appears Speed, the national manager for nearly a year, killed himself.
Cheshire Police confirmed he was found dead at 07:08 GMT at his home in Huntington, Chester. They said there were no suspicious circumstances.
Former Wales team mate Ryan Giggs said: "Words cannot begin to describe how sad I feel at hearing this awful news."

"The world has lost a great man in Gary speed I'm devastated spoke to him yesterday morning why ! Why. Why !! I'll miss him so much x”

Robbie Savage Former team mate, on Twitter

He said: "Our thoughts are with his family at what must be a very difficult time for them."

The FAW said: "We extend our sympathies and condolences to the family.
"We ask that everyone respects the family's privacy at this very sad time."
The FAW added: "That this tragedy should have overtaken someone so young and talented is a huge loss not only for his family and friends but a nation as a whole."
Speed, who was awarded the MBE in the 2010 Birthday Honours, leaves a wife and two children.
Phil Pritchard, FAW president, said they would do "whatever we can" to help Speed's family.

In a statement, Cheshire Police said: "At 7.08am on Sunday 27th November Cheshire Police was informed of a sudden death at an address in Huntington in Chester.

Speed signed for Newcastle for £5.5m in 1998

"Officers went to the scene where a 42-year-old man was found dead.
"The next of kin have been informed and have confirmed the identity of the man as Gary Speed.
85 caps
"There are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death and the family have requested that they are left in peace to grieve at this difficult time."
Police said a family tribute will be issued later.
Speed had appeared on BBC1's Football Focus show on Saturday afternoon, just hours before his death.
Footballers, celebrities and politicians began issuing tributes within minutes of the news.
Former Wales team mate, Robbie Savage, Tweeted: "The world has lost a great man in Gary speed I'm devastated spoke to him yesterday morning why ! Why. Why !! I'll miss him so much x
"He come to watch strictly 3/4 weeks ago I high fived him in the front row he loved the show ,he loved life he loved his family ! Devastated".

Former Wales team mate Ryan Giggs said: "I am totally devastated. Gary Speed was one of the nicest men in football and someone I am honoured to call a team-mate and friend.
"Words cannot begin to describe how sad I feel at hearing this awful news. It goes without saying my thoughts are with his family at this tremendously sad time."
First Minister Carwyn Jones said: "I'm deeply saddened to hear about the death of Gary Speed.
"This is devastating news and our thoughts are with his family at what must be a very difficult time for them."
Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan tweeted: "This is a sad day for football and for everyone in Wales.
"Gary Speed served club and country as a player and manager with great distinction."
Andrew RT Davies, Welsh Conservatives leader, said: "Gary Speed was tremendously gifted and I - along with millions of others - will always remember him as a legend in the game of football."
'Never be forgotten'
Welsh Liberal Democrats leader, Kirsty Williams, said: "It is a terrible, terrible shock. A tragedy for the Speed family and a tragedy for Welsh football."
Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones said the "whole nation is in shock", adding: "He will never be forgotten."
At the Liberty Stadium in Swansea - where the home side were playing Aston Villa a minute's silence followed by a minute's applause was held.
Speed, born in Mancot, Flintshire, took over the Wales job in December 2010, and earlier this month, said the side's rapid improvement had exceeded all expectations.
A 4-1 friendly win over Norway represented a third successive win for Wales, and Speed's fifth in 10 games as manager.
At the time, he said: "We've progressed further than I'd have thought in this space of time but we've still got a lot of work to do."
'Stunned and saddened'
Speed won 85 caps for his country during a 14-year international career.
He was given the top job in Welsh football despite only having four months managerial experience.
Speed began his playing career at Leeds United after coming through the trainee ranks, and was part of the side that won the last Football League title in 1992, before the introduction of the Premier League.

Swansea crowd pay tribute to Gary Speed

A Leeds spokesman said the club was "stunned and saddened" by the news.
He was handed his Wales debut as a 20-year-old in the 1-0 friendly win over Costa Rica in May 1990.
He left Leeds in 1996 after 312 appearances to join Everton - who he went on to captain - in a £3.5m move.
Seven goals
Newcastle followed, in a £5.5m switch in 1998. During his six years with the Magpies, he suffered two FA Cup final defeats, but enjoyed a taste of Champions League football.
He then spent four years with Bolton Wanderers after agreeing a £750,000 move.
Speed became the first player to reach 500 Premier League appearances.
He retired from international duty in 2004, having scored seven goals and captaining his country 44 times.
Speed's final appearance came in 3-2 World Cup qualifying defeat by Poland in October 2004.
His tally of 85 caps is a record for an outfield player.

Peter Roebuck

Peter Roebuck, who was found dead on Saturday 12 November aged 55, was a brilliant man fanatically dedicated to cricket.

As a batsman he proved a highly competent county player. As captain of Somerset he was the leading figure behind the coup which ousted Viv Richards and Joel Garner from the club, causing Ian Botham to resign in protest.

Roebuck batting against Oxfordshire, April 1985

After retiring from first-class cricket, Roebuck emigrated to Australia, where he became an authoritative, waspish and highly successful writer and commentator on the game.

In 2001, however, he was the subject of a humiliating scandal, in which he was found guilty of common assault after caning three 19-year-old youths who had been staying with him near Taunton for cricket coaching. To outsiders it seemed that he had emerged unscathed from this disaster; evidently, though, his demons were never slain.

Peter Michael Roebuck was born on March 6 1956, one of six children of two teachers – his father of Economics and his mother of Maths. Both parents were cricket enthusiasts; indeed his mother had kept wicket for the Oxford University Ladies team, which in turn would be captained by one of his sisters.

When Peter was a boy his family moved to Bath, where he would practise interminably by hitting a plastic ball against a wall of his parents' flat, while commentating on the state of play. He liked to recall that the tapping sounds made by this game greatly excited the occupants of the next door flat, who were given to holding séances.

When questions were asked about his intention of pursuing cricket as a career, Peter determined to prove that he was inured to the dangers of batting by facing fast bowlers at the indoor cricket school in Bath. He was duly hit, and hurt, but discovered that he was as keen as ever on the game. "That was the first hurdle overcome," he wrote.
At 13 and still a titch – 4ft 2in if Wisden is to believed – Roebuck played for Somerset Second, bowling leg breaks and googlies, and trying to muster enough strength to hit the ball off the square.
The combination of his intellectual and sporting achievements won him a scholarship to Millfield. His younger brother Paul and two of his sisters were also awarded scholarships to the school, while his parents were taken on as teachers.
Going up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Roebuck took first-class honours in Law, despite playing cricket for the university for three successive years. In the first of these, 1975, he scored 158 against Oxford, and in quick time.
In 1976, playing for a Combined Oxford and Cambridge side against the West Indians, he was hit by a bumper from Andy Roberts, and taken to hospital, where he was informed that if the blow had been a quarter of an inch away it might have been fatal. He then returned to the crease, only to have his cap knocked off by another Roberts delivery. Roebuck seemed to relish this harsh education.
He had already made his debut for Somerset in 1974. Though not blessed with outstanding natural talent, by 1978 he had become, by sheer determination, an important member of the county side.
The joke was that he performed the function of preventing Richards and Botham from batting together, as the two great men were liable to get out by trying to outdo each other.
Between 1979 and 1983 Somerset's star-studded team won five trophies in limited over cricket. It is doubtful whether Richards, Botham and Garner paid undue attention to their remote, bookish and bespectacled team-mate. This, however, was a mistake, for Roebuck possessed an intensely competitive spirit and extraordinary strength of will.
In 1983, with the luminaries of Somerset away playing in the World Cup, and Brian Rose injured, Roebuck – suddenly and surprisingly – found himself captaining the county for a few games. He enjoyed the experience, and began to think more deeply about how the team's performance might be improved.
In 1985 Somerset finished bottom of the championship, and Roebuck, appointed captain for the following year, did not shrink from the conclusion that the immortals in the team were no longer pulling their weight. Still more bravely, he determined to rectify matters.
The year 1986 proved almost as disastrous as the previous one, as Somerset finished in penultimate position. That August, Roebuck, as captain, secured the sacking of Richards and Garner in favour of the New Zealander Martin Crowe, whereupon Botham resigned out of loyalty to his friends.
To the extent that Somerset ascended the championship table to 11th place in both 1987 and 1988, Roebuck's actions may have been justified. Moreover, since 1984, when he hit seven 100s, his own batting had become formidably consistent.
In four successive seasons, from 1984 to 1987, he averaged more than 40, reaching a peak in the latter year at 49.95. In 1988 he was one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year.
His form slumped rather in 1988, but recovered after he handed over the captaincy to his friend Vic Marks. In 1989 he made a hundred against the Australians His highest first-class score, in 1986, was 221 not out, against a Nottinghamshire attack which included Richard Hadlee.
Roebuck retired from first-class cricket at the end of the season of 1991. In 355 games and 552 innings he had accumulated 17,558 runs at an average of 37.27. As an occasional bowler, variously described a medium-pacer and an off-spinner, he took 72 wickets at 49.16.
Between 1993 and 1999, and again in 2001, Roebuck captained Devon, which won four successive Minor Counties championships from 1994, as well as bringing off two one-day titles.
After 1991, however, his professional career was in Australia, where he became a trenchant and opinionated cricket correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, and also won a high reputation as a commentator for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Latterly, he also worked for the internet site Cricinfo.
Though his views, not least his campaign in 2008 against Ricky Ponting as Australia's captain, brought furious reaction from the public, Roebuck enjoyed living in Australia.
His prickly, confrontational, individualistic and courageously honest character suited the national temperament, while the standard of his writing did Cambridge proud. Many who worked with him thought of him as a friend, however resistant he might have been to the concept.
"I enjoyed his company and always felt I'd learnt something from him," remarked the hardly less contentious Ian Chappell, a former captain of Australia.
Roebuck also enjoyed visiting South Africa, and showed his generosity in the money he gave for helping Africans to obtain a university education.
Yet, as his conviction for the caning incident in 2001 showed, there was a darker side to his nature. The explanation he gave in court was typically unapologetic. He had told the boys, he said, that he would beat them if they did not conform to "house rules", and he had carried out this threat when they failed to conform to his standards. "I have no time for half-heartedness," he said. "My philosophy is 'through fire into light'."
He was given a suspended sentence of four months for each of the three offences. For all his apparent coolness, however, it seems he was unable to face the consequences when the police visited him on Saturday night.
Roebuck published It Never Rains: A Cricketer's Lot (1985); Sometimes I Forgot to Laugh (2004); It Takes All Sorts: Celebrating Cricket's Colourful Characters (2005); and In It To Win: the Australian Cricket Supremacy (2007).
Peter Roebuck, born March 6 1956, died November 12 2011

John Neville

John Neville, who has died aged 86, achieved early renown as a leading Shakespearean actor with the Old Vic company in the 1950s and later starred in the title role in the 1988 film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and as "The Well-Manicured Man" in the The X-Files.

John Neville as Baron Munchausen 

Noted for his aquiline good looks, swift intelligence and distinctive baritone voice, Neville dominated, with Richard Burton, the Old Vic stage in the late 1950s. He played many leading roles, including Romeo, Hamlet and an acclaimed Richard in Richard II, alongside Virginia McKenna as Queen Anne.

In 1956 he and Burton performed a memorable double-act, alternating the roles of Othello and Iago. Neville later recalled how, before one matinée performance, they had gone out for a liquid lunch at The Ivy: "Staggering out of the restaurant a little the worse for wear, we returned to the theatre and both played Iago. The audience noticed nothing unusual and nor, in the state we were in, did we."

Although the two men were good friends, the gossip columns made them out to be rivals ("the Willesden Wizard v The Welsh Wonder"), and both had their own (mostly young, female) claques. When they appeared together in Henry V, a reviewer noted: "John Neville as Chorus could not move a muscle without eliciting a loud bravo; Richard Burton dared not twitch his crown without waking a counter-cheer from the balcony."

Neville was frequently billed as John Gielgud's natural successor, and he could have become as well-known but for the fact that he never seemed able to settle, and gained a reputation for walking out of jobs when he became bored. In 1972 he left Britain for good and moved to Canada.

The son of a lorry driver and council mechanic, John Neville was born in Willesden, north London, on May 2 1925 and educated at Chiswick County School for Boys. A church choir outing to the Old Vic to see Ralph Richardson and Vivien Leigh in A Midsummer Night's Dream inspired him with a love of theatre, and he went on to play Brutus in a school production of Julius Caesar.

He left school aged 16 to work as a stores clerk in a garage, but his performance as Hamlet in a church drama group production won him a council scholarship to Rada.
He took it up after three years' wartime service as a signalman in the Royal Navy, during which he took part in the Normandy landings and served in the Far East.
Neville made his West End debut in 1947 in a walk-on part in Richard II at the New Theatre. The following year he was engaged for the Open Air Theatre season at Regent's Park, where he played Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Chatillon in King John.
In 1949 he was engaged by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre where, among other roles, he played John Worthing in The Importance of Being Ernest; he also married the play's Cecily, Caroline Hooper.
Moving on to the Bristol Old Vic, Neville soon became the company's leading man, playing Surface in The School for Scandal; Ferdinand in Love's Labour's Lost; and Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
In 1953 Michael Benthall engaged him for the Old Vic, where early roles included Lewis the Dauphin in King John; Orsino in Twelfth Night; Macduff in Macbeth; and Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost. It was, however, his performance as Richard II in February 1955 that established him in the company's front rank. He captured perfectly the beleaguered king's combination of arrogance and pathos, and on the opening night his performance won him 23 curtain calls.
His other roles at the theatre included Hotspur, Troilus, Romeo and Andrew Aguecheek. He was Pistol in King Henry the Fourth and a subtle but forceful Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. His Hamlet came in 1957, with Jack Gwillim as Claudius and Judi Dench as Ophelia. The Daily Telegraph's critic, WA Darlington, felt that although he gave a memorable performance – "sensitive, romantic-looking and intelligent" – it lacked something "in music and emotional force".
Neville left the Old Vic in 1959 to explore other avenues. He directed The Importance of Being Ernest at the Bristol Old Vic, then took over from Keith Michell as Nestor in the musical comedy Irma La Douce at the Lyric Theatre, winning praise for his fine singing voice. Rather less convincing was his performance as Lord Alfred Douglas in Gregory Ratoff's biopic Oscar Wilde (1960), critics considering Neville too old for the part.
After a temporary return to the Old Vic to direct Henry V, with Donald Houston playing the king, Neville was the enigmatic Stranger in Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea, with Margaret Leighton, at the Queen's Theatre. He also appeared in Peter Ustinov's film Billy Budd (1962) and Peter Sellers's directorial debut, Mr Topaze, in 1961.
Also in 1961, in another departure, Neville turned his back on the West End stage and moved to the Nottingham Playhouse, where he served as joint director from 1963 and played numerous roles, including Macbeth, Coriolanus, Faustus and Sir Thomas More. In 1967, however, he resigned after a row with the city authorities over funding.
For a time Neville worked with Prospect Productions and also starred as Marlborough in the 1969 BBC Two serial The First Churchills, and as Captain Macheath in The Beggar's Opera at Chichester in 1972. But his efforts to find another theatre directorship in Britain got nowhere, and in 1972 he accepted an offer to direct The Rivals at the newly-built National Arts centre in Ottawa. He decided to stay and later took Canadian citizenship.
For the next two decades he continued to act and direct the classics. At Edmonton he oversaw the development of a new arts complex; directed Much Ado About Nothing (playing Benedick) and Uncle Vanya; and played Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Shaw in Dear Liar. Moving to the Neptune Theatre at Halifax, Nova Scotia, he toured in Othello; directed The Seagull; and starred in The Taming of the Shrew and The Master Builder.
In 1982 he moved to Stratford, Ontario, where in 1985 he took over the financially troubled Festival Theatre, founded in 1953 by Tyrone Guthrie. During a notably successful four years he staged Mother Courage, Othello, The Three Sisters and a modern-dress Hamlet. He also took leading roles himself in Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, Pericles, The Merchant of Venice (as Shylock) and Henry VIII.
In 1988 Terry Gilliam chose Neville to play the title role in his film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Although the film was a financial flop, Neville's performance as the baron (from the ages of 35 to 80) was well-received and led to numerous invitations to appear on film and television. From 1995 to 1998 he had a prominent recurring role in The X-Files as the "Well-Manicured Man".
John Neville was appointed OBE in 1965 and a member of the Order of Canada in 2006.
He is survived by his wife, Caroline, and by their three sons and three daughters.

John Neville, born May 2 1925, died November 19 2011

Jackie Leven

Jackie Leven, who has died of cancer aged 61, was one of rock and folk music’s most colourful and individual talents, though he never achieved the wide success and recognition that his performances undoubtedly merited.

“The greatest band you’ve never heard of,” was how a critic described Doll By Doll, the idiosyncratic band Leven led in compelling fashion through the late 1970s and early 1980s. The group’s psychedelic-flavoured style may have been out of step with the times, preventing it from achieving anything more than cult status, but Leven’s rampant imagination rewarded fans’ fascination. Doll By Doll’s 1979 album Gypsy Blood was hailed, retrospectively, as one of British rock’s masterpieces.

Jackie Leven

 

Usually described as a maverick, or an outsider who swam constantly against the tide, Leven survived not only the split of Doll By Doll in 1982, but also an attempt to murder him, as well as debilitating drug addiction. He re-emerged in the 1990s as a darkly witty and unusually perceptive singer-songwriter operating on the fringes of the folk scene. After a 40-year career and 400 original songs, he was still at the top of his game when he collaborated with the multi-instrumentalist Michael Cosgrave on his final album Wayside Shrines and the Code of the Travelling Man – released to enthusiastic reviews earlier this year.

Leven had an unusual background. He was born to a gypsy family in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, on June 19 1950, with a London Irish father and a Northumbrian mother. He was a loner in childhood and had a sketchy education, constantly playing truant from school. Instead he preferred to spend his time wandering alone in the hills near Kirkcaldy, an environment which subsequently featured heavily in his songwriting. On the rare days he did attend, one of his schoolmates was the future Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and the pair were even on Kirkcaldy High School’s debating society together. As a Labour backbencher, Brown occasionally attended Leven’s solo gigs.

One thing Leven did learn, however, was his mother’s love of the blues, and as a teenager he spent much of his time playing in local folk clubs. Having definitively left school he hitchhiked around Britain and parts of Europe, often sleeping rough, and then wound up busking in London. Initially adopting the name John St Field, he released his eccentric, psychedelic first record, Control, in 1971 (reissued by Cooking Vinyl in 1997), before forming Doll By Doll during the height of the punk movement in the late 1970s.

Leven’s weirdly disquieting songs — often confronting such difficult issues as mental illness and homelessness — sharply distinguished Doll By Doll from the more usual bands of the punk era and their simplistic anger. After challenging but failing to dent the dogmatic attitudes of the day, the band disintegrated following four albums that were critically well-received but sold sparsely.

While working on a solo album in 1983 Leven became the victim of a vicious random attack in the street by a group of strangers who tried to strangle him as he walked home from a recording session in North London. “One guy was strangling me and some others were giving me a serious kicking,” Leven recalled. “I remember thinking, quite clearly: 'I’m going to die here.’” He was saved by his producer, who, Leven said, “jumped in a Range Rover and came surging up the street, horn blaring, hurtling onto the pavement in great grandstanding style.”
Nonetheless, Leven’s larynx was badly damaged and in the aftermath of the assault he was unable to sing or play guitar. He was plunged further into gloom when he separated from his girlfriend, and he soon became a recluse, taking solace in heroin.
Two years later he emerged – fully recovered – after undergoing a course of alternative Chinese treatment and psychic healing. Such was his praise for these remedies over more traditional rehabilitation treatments that he went on to co-found the Core Trust, an organisation in Marylebone which promotes a “holistic” approach to helping people with alcohol and drug addictions. As a patron of the Core Trust, he once met Diana, Princess of Wales, responding to her request to sing something with the traditional Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl Of Moray, which he had previously used as the basis for one of Doll By Doll’s most popular songs, Main Travelled Roads.
Leven subsequently left London to live in Oban on the west coast of Scotland, where he involved himself in the local community and wrote the material that provided the basis of his dramatic and expansive comeback album, The Mystery Of Love Is Greater Than The Mystery Of Death (1994). This was ranked by Q magazine as one of the “100 Best Albums of All Time” and included one of his finest songs, Call Mother.
His ambitious follow-up solo album, Forbidden Songs Of The Dying West (1995), included a 60-voice male choir, guest artists such as the songwriters Eddi Reader and Andy White, and one of his most remarkable songs, Young Male Suicide Blessed By Invisible Woman. The mystical Fairy Tales For Hard Man album (1997), confirmed his evolution into both a soulful, almost spiritual singer and a broody, intriguing songwriter.
Leven continued to experiment and explore different styles on the eclectic Night Lilies (1998) and Defending Ancient Springs (2000). This album, in part inspired by the poet Kathleen Raine, includes sound effects, industrial samples, and a duet with David Thomas (of the experimental rock music group Pere Ubu) on a bold cover of the old Righteous Brothers’ hit You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.
He only became more prolific in the new millennium, releasing further imaginative collections such as Elegy For Johnny Cash (2005) – which includes the entertainingly-titled Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students Of Zen – as well as Lovers At The Gun Club (2008). His final record – subtitled Songs Written In German Hotel Rooms — was full of characteristically dark but funny numbers such as Swine Flu Fever Blues; To Live and Die In Levenland; and Townes At The Borderline, and incorporated references to Captain Beefheart, John Coltrane and Leslie Phillips along the way.
“All I can do is make records that I would like and want to listen to and hope others agree,” Jackie Leven said earlier this year. “That is my fate.”
He was twice married and is survived by his partner, Deborah Greenwood, and by a son of an earlier relationship.
Jackie Leven, born June 19 1950, died November 15 2011

England legend D'Oliveira dies

 

D'Oliveira played 44 Tests for England after moving from South Africa 

 

Former England all-rounder Basil D'Oliveira has died at the age of 80.

Born in South Africa, D'Oliveira moved to England in 1960 due to the lack of opportunities for non-White players.
In 1968 he was named in England's squad to tour South Africa which was then cancelled as South Africa's government refused to accept his presence.
D'Oliveira played county cricket for Worcestershire between 1964-80 and represented England in 44 Tests, scoring 2,484 runs at an average of 40.
The headlines made by D'Oliveira in 1968 marked the start of South Africa's sporting isolation.
After being added to the England squad as a replacement for the injured Tom Cartwright the South African government made it clear he would not be welcome after they learned he was originally from South Africa and coloured.
The tour was called off and the incident culminated in a ban on sporting ties with South Africa which would last until the early 1990s.
No official team from any country subsequently toured South Africa until apartheid was abolished following Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990.
Cricket South Africa chief executive Gerald Majola paid tribute to the man fondly called 'Dolly' whose health had been deteriorating for some time leading up to his death in England.
"He was a man of true dignity and a wonderful role model as somebody who overcame the most extreme prejudices and circumstances to take his rightful place on the world stage.

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• Test caps: 44
• Test debut: v West Indies 1966
• Last test: v Australia 1972
• Runs: 2484
• 100s: 5
• Ave: 40.06
• Wickets: 47
• Best (match): 5-62
• Econ rate: 1.95

"The circumstances surrounding his being prevented from touring the country of his birth with England in 1968 led directly to the intensification of opposition to apartheid around the world and contributed materially to the sports boycott that turned out to be an Achilles heel of the apartheid government.
"Throughout this shameful period in South Africa's sporting history, Basil displayed a human dignity that earned him worldwide respect and admiration.
"His memory and inspiration will live on among all of us. On behalf of the CSA family I would like to convey our sympathies to his family and salute them on a life well lived."
D'Oliveira's son Damian played county cricket for Worcestershire, between 1982 and 1995.
In August his grandson Brett, a leg spinner, also signed for Worcestershire on a one-year contract.

Karl Slover

Karl Slover, who has died aged 93, was a member of the "Singer Midgets" vaudeville troupe and played several roles as a Munchkin in the 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz.

In the film, Slover appeared as Herald No 1 – the first of the three trumpeters to herald the arrival of the Munchkin mayor. He also played one of the Munchkin soldiers; was one of the singers who prompted Judy Garland to Follow the Yellow Brick Road; and he was the only "Sleepyhead" boy in the nest of eggs.

Karl Slover

 

Born Karl Kosiczky on September 21 1918 in Prakendorf, Hungary (now in Slovakia), he stopped growing at the age of four and was diagnosed with pituitary dwarfism.

"My father tried everything to make me grow," he recalled. "He took me to Budapest where I was placed on a stretching machine with one doctor pulling at my legs and another my feet until I screamed with pain. They tried other things too – there were gold injections; I was once placed in a barrel full of coconut oil; another time I met with a witch doctor in Hawaii – I was seen as a punishment for something that perhaps my father had done in a previous life."

On his ninth birthday his father sold him to the impresario Leo Singer, who ran a travelling vaudeville troupe of "midgets" based in Berlin: "My father was glad to get rid of me," he recalled. "Even at that tender age I knew I'd be better off with Singer than with my parents."

In 1928 he travelled with the troupe to America on forged documents "proving" he was 16. Bookings flooded in, and the Singer Midgets toured extensively – they stopped in Hawaii for three years and played at the Roxy Theatre and Hippodrome in New York. At just 4ft 4in, Kosiczky was the smallest member of the troupe and, later, the shortest of the male Munchkins.

After The Wizard of Oz he continued to perform for three more years in the "Original World Famous Singers Midget Show". Then, when the show broke up in 1942, he found work with an entrepreneur called BA Slover, who owned several rides at the Royal American Carnival in Tampa, Florida, and, with his wife, ran a company that leased mobile carnival rides to shopping centres and other venues. Kosiczky sold tickets for the rides and changed his name from Kosiczky to Slover when he became an American citizen in 1943. Subsequently he performed with trained poodles.
As well as The Wizard of Oz, Slover appeared in They Gave Him A Gun (1937), starring Spencer Tracy; Bringing Up Baby (1938), with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn; Terror of Tiny Town (1938), a film with a midget cast in which he played the town barber and a saloon bass player; the Laurel and Hardy comedy Block-Heads (1938); the Humphrey Bogart thriller Crime School (1938); and Magic Trio (1938). In 1945, at the age of 27, he donned a bonnet and played a baby in a pram in The Lost Weekend, with Ray Milland and Doris Dowling.
In 1963, on his only return trip to Europe, Slover was reunited with his mother: "Father was long dead and to see mother and my sisters again was the happiest day of my little life," he recalled.
In 2007 he was one of seven Munchkins at the unveiling of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame dedicated to the little people in the film.

Karl Slover, born September 21 1918, died November 15 2011