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