Roy Horn death due to complications of Covid 19
https://www.biography.com/performer/roy-horn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjbonHKEt-I

Kind regards, Paul.

I see that Dame Vera Lynn has died having reached the age of 103.  As a teenager I found songs such as (There'll be Bluebirds over) The White Cliffs of Dover slushy and sentimental and didn't hesitate to say so.  I remember my Dad saying the song should be put in perspective - it meant something at the time of World War II when there were enemy bombers crossing the cliffs of Dover at very regular intervals and "Johnny will sleep in his own little bed again" had significance when children - in the cities and major towns anyway - often had to get out of their beds and go into air raid shelters - or maybe had been evacuated to the country/smaller towns.

She certainly put an effort into helping keep morale high (or as high as possible given the circumstances) among the armed forces and indeed the general population.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I see that Dame Vera Lynn has died having reached the age of 103.  As a teenager I found songs such as (There'll be Bluebirds over) The White Cliffs of Dover slushy and sentimental and didn't hesitate to say so.  I remember my Dad saying the song should be put in perspective - it meant something at the time of World War II when there were enemy bombers crossing the cliffs of Dover at very regular intervals and "Johnny will sleep in his own little bed again" had significance when children - in the cities and major towns anyway - often had to get out of their beds and go into air raid shelters - or maybe had been evacuated to the country/smaller towns.

She certainly put an effort into helping keep morale high (or as high as possible given the circumstances) among the armed forces and indeed the general population.

 
LiR, crossed posts...
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t763p650-on-this-day-in-history

and yes perhaps I am a bit sentimental (hope de partner don't read it) 
But serious, I was and am really enchanted by her strong and specific voice...and as you will perhaps agree, not a bad figure too in her fourties...and I think your father was completely right...

Kind regards from Paul.

Actor Ian Holm has died aged 88. His many film credits included Chariots of Fire (1981), The Madness of King George (1994), The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) and Alien (1979). 



Holm in Mexico City in 1988 during the filming of the television spy series Game, Set and Match.

Sad to learn that, Vizzer.  A group of us went from school to see him acting the title role in "Richard III" way back when.  Wasn't he in the 1980s radio adaptation of TLOTR?

Composer Ennio Morricone has died. Best known for his film soundtracks, his prolific output included scores for Cinema Paradiso (1988), The Mission (1986), 1900 (1976), The Battle of Algiers (1966) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). 



Morricone with director Sergio Leone (bearded) during the filming of the spaghetti western My Name Is Nobody in 1973.

I hadn't realised the late Mr Morricone had written the scores for the other films you named, Vizzer (besides The Good the Bad and the Ugly) and some other spaghetti westerns though I realised he composed other works besides scores to said westerns.  He was indeed talented, and thanks also to Gilgamesh for the quirky rendition of TGTBATU's score.

I suppose people have seen that former footballer Jack (Jackie) Charlton has died.  I'm definitely not a dedicated follower of football though I sometimes watch the important international games.  Even so my teenaged self was pleased when the England football team won the World Cup back in 1966 and Jack Charlton was part of that team.  The England football team never seems to have reached such heights in the years in between then and now (if there's an important win by the English team I've overlooked I'm sure my fellow Res Historians will let me know - forcefully!!).

I am pleased to see you call him Jackie, LIR, because when I saw that Jack Charlton had died I wondered if it was the same man I always knew as Jackie. England might not have reached those giddy heights again, but NZ always cheers when we get to any final. In 1982 their struggles to get there galvanised our nation. From the New Zealand History site is the following: "But in 1982 football seized the country’s imagination, when the national side – known as the All Whites – took on the best at the World Cup finals in Spain.
To get there, the New Zealanders had to battle through an epic qualifying schedule of 15 games at venues stretching halfway across the world. After sweeping aside Indonesia, Taiwan, Fiji and arch-rival Australia, New Zealand clashed with China, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for a spot in the finals. Even then, the All Whites had to win a sudden-death play off to ensure qualification. Next stop was Spain, where the team faced the might of Scotland, the Soviet Union and Brazil."

Belated reply to Caro - NZ seems to do very well in rugby games.

What I came here to mention is that Dame Diana Rigg, the actress who had success on the stage, the TV and on film has died aged 82.  I can remember her as Emma Peel in The Avengers in the 1960s and more recently she played the redoubtable Olenna Tyrrell in Game of Thrones but of course she was excellent in serious drama too.

I particularly liked her performance as the vacuous Arlena Marshall in the 1982 film of Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun: 



For some reason in a recent television showing of the film a memorable line of hers was cut. "The bitch Daphne!" she exclaims after she discovers that hotel manager Daphne Castle (played by Maggie Smith) has dished the dirt on Arlena's colourful past to her new husband. I'm not sure why the line would have been cut other than perhaps for some pre-watershed or other 'socially correct' reasoning.

Thanks for that, Vizzer. We have Evil Under the Sun taped and really to play on our tv; not really up-to-date on Netflix etc., but do have Sky and when the sports channel was out of action they replaced it with Sky movies. 
We will make it our next movie to watch. Maybe tonight? I absolutely loved The Avengers.

The name was Bond.........James Bond. Sir Sean Connery dies aged 90:

Sad news.  Here is a clip of Sean Connery as Hotspur in the BBC's 'An Age of Kings' from the early 1960s.  The actress in the introduction who played Joan of Arc in that series is a young Eileen Atkins.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I suppose people have seen that former footballer Jack (Jackie) Charlton has died.  I'm definitely not a dedicated follower of football though I sometimes watch the important international games.  Even so my teenaged self was pleased when the England football team won the World Cup back in 1966 and Jack Charlton was part of that team.  The England football team never seems to have reached such heights in the years in between then and now (if there's an important win by the English team I've overlooked I'm sure my fellow Res Historians will let me know - forcefully!!).

Jackie used to split hares, didnt he ?  Probably grew up with whippets.

Diego Maradona dies at the age of 60.


Commentator gets a bit carried away:

Yes, but Argentina is going to have three days of national mourning.
Here in NZ we have Shohab Achtar (sp?) objecting to NZ telling the Pakistani team that if they can't keep to NZ's isolation rules they will be sent home. He was extremely annoyed, saying NZ should be pleased to have Pakistan here and had no right to be telling them how to behave, since Pakistan is the greatest country in the world!

David Prowse who was Darth Vader in the original Star Wars films - and also the Green Cross code man - has died.

Dame Barbara Windsor has died.  Latterly she's well known for Eastenders and before that the Carry On films. 


But as well as the clip where people pay tribute to her I found a podcast where she talks about the Theatre Royal, Stratford East (it's short 8:03 minutes).  It ran on into a podcast about London Bridge when I played it so if anyone listens you might want to click off at 8:03.  Barbara Windsor on the Theatre Royal Stratford East by VocalEyesAD (soundcloud.com)  BW's speaking voice while not being received pronunciation isn't as broad cockney as I thought it would be.  I don't think there's anything wrong with a cockney accent by the way - I'd have to answer to some of my former work colleagues from my time in London if I did.

Yes LiR, from "Carry on" ...but there too she was a real star...
My sincere condolences...I hope that they in the near future find something against that illness that I am so afraid of...
Kind regards, Paul.

Charley Pride, the first black Country Music star, has died.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwNKiiPdyOg

And John le Carré, GG.



And now I see, for the first time, that he really worked in the "intelligence"...

Kind regards, Paul.

Maybe John Le Carre's experience in 'intelligence' helped give his work a sense of truth.  Then again, Ian Fleming had some 'intelligence' experience and he wrote more flamboyant spy stories.

Along with an obituary to John le Carré The Guardian also posted a recent Interview 'My ties to England have loosened': John le Carré on Britain, Boris and Brexit. Both make interesting reading.

Le Carré explained that his father, Ronald "Ronnie" Cornwell, was a notorious fraudster and confidence trickster who was in prison for much of his son's childhood and accordingly John was packed off to a series of brutal public schools. In the interview he says:

"From the moment I went to boarding schools I was learning to be a gent – nice little pun – I had none of the attitudes of the ruling class to keep me going. I didn’t have a pony, that kind of thing. My dad for part of my childhood was in prison. So I arrived in the heartland of the establishment – private education – as a kind of spy, as somebody who had to put on the uniform, affect a voice and attitudes, and give myself a background I didn’t have. And so it was a forced assimilation and I became fascinated by the class I was pretending to be a member of. And it’s no surprise to me that although I loathed my public school I ended up teaching at Eton, and it’s no surprise to me now that I was so fascinated by the interior motor of British society, and that I was drawn to what I believe is the secret centre of our administration."

And regarding his time in MI5 and MI6:
"Please remember, I was a very junior figure in both MI5 and MI6. So much of what in my novels is assumed to be interior knowledge is really imagined stuff. But when I was allowed to attend operational meetings I heard what bigger animals than I were getting up to, and so by the time I got out of that world – with great relief – I had a really big treasure chest of imagined operations, which were based on glimpses of the reality. But I never did anything of the least value in that world."

And he added, regarding Yevgeny Primakov, the former head of the KGB who came to Britain for an official visit, at the end of which his one request was to meet le Carré,
"And so Jane and I found ourselves in the Russian embassy surrounded by Russians, with Primakov in front of me. He was an extremely intelligent man, quite a humanist, though at the age of 18 he was already working with the NKVD, later to become the KGB. He was charming and we had a wonderful time together, but I was so in above my pay rate that it was ridiculous. He imagined somehow that the author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was a colleague in sophistication. And that sometimes happens to me still. People insist that I know things that I have absolutely no knowledge of, and never did have."

As I say The Guardian articles give interesting insights into the mind of an interesting man.

Some days ago died Janine de Greef in a care house in Belgium due to Covid 19. There was only some mentioning in Belgian papers some two days ago, but see in Britain and the US they haven't yet forgotten Janine. She was part of the Comet line during WWII and survived.
And I said Britain and see the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/13/janine-de-greef-obituary
From the article:
"Janine de Greef, who has died aged 95, was a teenage courier for the Comet escape line that linked occupied Belgium to neutral Spain during the second world war. For three years she escorted allied servicemen from Paris to the south-west city of Bayonne by train, or from Bayonne to the foothills of the Pyrenees by tram or bicycle.
More than once she had to teach an aviator how to ride a bicycle before they could go ahead. Sergeant Bob Frost, an RAF gunner whom she guided from Paris to St Jean de Luz in 1942, remembered her as “a real heroine, that girl”. De Greef served as a crucial link in Comet’s rescue of 287 servicemen and 76 civilians from Nazi-occupied Europe."





And about the Comet Line:
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Comet_Line

The BBC made a series about it in collaboration with the Belgian Television:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Army_(TV_series)



And these same Brits made a parody on it: Allo, Allo (the French and most Belgians don't pronounce the "h")

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006xyt3

I came to post that Mary Wilson (an original member of The Supremes) has died at the age of 76. She never became as famous as Diana Ross but she always seemed a nice lady.  I was saddened to read that Tom Moore, the elderly man who raised money for health workers last year had died.

I was saddened to read that sculptress, Heather Jansh, had died on 5th July 2021.  At one time married to the late, great Bert (singer/songwriter/guitarist) although maybe not a household name she was very much gifted in her own right (well I think so).  Profile Artist Heather Jansch driftwood & bronze horse sculptures

Sidney Poitier has died aged 94. 

I'm going to watch this:



Great Film!!

Comedian and Comic Writer, Barry Cryer has died aged 86:

“A man drives down a country lane and runs over a cockerel. At the farmhouse door, a woman answers.
“‘I've killed your cockerel,’ he says. ‘I’d like to replace it.’ The woman replies: ‘Please yourself – the hens are round the back’

He'll be sorely missed from I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue - on hearing the news I understand Samantha took it hard.




I'll get me coat ...

This may not mean anything to all of you but I heard from Eliane Heseltine that her husband John, who was a regular on the BBC boards and suffered a stroke years ago, has died. She asked me to let you know. She tried to get him back on the boards but I know from any time away how difficult it is to get back into them. They were living in France, I think, though they had two houses.
We spend some time with them after his stroke and before mine. They were great company.

Sad news, Caro. John was a great poster on the Beeb History Boards. Highlighted in my memory will ever be the 'legal litigation' correspondence exchanges  between you two, clever and very funny. That was on the old black and white board. John then stirred up indignation when the change of style - in purple was introduced; we put up a silly fight about liking the way some lines rambled all over the place on the old site etc. What fun those days were then - and not without a great deal of awesome wide ranging erudition from some posters that enriched it.

Some. like me, owe a great deal to the likes of John  and you  -  for making the old Beeb History site in those early days   such a daily joy to dip into. He must have been a great  person to befriend - my condolences to his family. Regards, P.

Can I send on this post to Eliane, please, P? I think she would appreciate it, as do I. I remember grouchy Andrew who ran the board in those days, scolding me for going off topic, often, and even threatening to ban me, even though I was always polite, though somehow John and I managed to joke about cricket. I don't remember the legal litigation ones.

I didn't know the couple in question, Caro, not having joined this board until 2013.  It is always sad when someone loses a life partner.  If you deem condolences from an internet stranger might be helpful, please convey mine to the lady who is the surviving partner.

I'm sad to learn that Lynda Baron (Nurse Gladys Emmanuel from Open All Hours though she had a varied career other than that programme) died on 7th March 2022 

Composer Vangelis has died at the age of 79. He worked on films such as Chariots of Fire, Bladerunner and this one:

Legendary jockey, Lester Piggott, has died aged 86.

He won his first horse race at the age of 12, riding a horse called The Chase at Haydock Park in 1948.

Six years later, he won his first of nine Derby winners on the American colt Never Say Die, a 33/1 outsider.

Piggott on Never Say Die, Epsom , 1954:

Oh, I hadn't heard about Lester Piggott's death, Trike. Usually these important people are recognised at least in passing on our media. They did have something about Vangelis, whom I had not heard of.

I see Kirk Douglas died a few days ago, aged 103. I am pretty sure he was oldest star still alive and now I will check who has that honour now. I see  that Norman Lloyd died aged 106 a few months ago. He wasn't as famous as Douglas. Marsha Hunt is now 105, but she is not so famous, either.

On the rooftop of a cafe in the South Korean city of Gyeongju:

James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, has died on his 103rd birthday. The climate scientist died at home on Tuesday surrounded by loved ones, his family said.
Lovelock, who was one of the UK’s most respected independent scientists, had been in good health until six months ago, when he had a bad fall.


(extracted from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/27/james-lovelock-creator-of-gaia-hypothesis-dies-on-103rd-birthday?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other )

Doctor Who and Wombles actor Bernard Cribbins has died aged 93, his agent has confirmed.
During a career that spanned seven decades, Cribbins narrated the 1970s children's programme The Wombles.
He also played the Doctor's companion Tom Campbell in the 1966 film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 AD returning 41 years later in the revived TV series.
The actor was known by generations of children - he also played the station porter Albert Perks in 1970 film The Railway Children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yShvgXZQBTs

Character actor David Warner died on Monday aged 80:

Green George wrote:

Doctor Who and Wombles actor Bernard Cribbins has died aged 93, his agent has confirmed.
During a career that spanned seven decades, Cribbins narrated the 1970s children's programme The Wombles.
He also played the Doctor's companion Tom Campbell in the 1966 film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 AD returning 41 years later in the revived TV series.
The actor was known by generations of children - he also played the station porter Albert Perks in 1970 film The Railway Children.

 Bernard had an extremely varied career in films and television.

Clip from "The Hotel Inspectors" episode of Fawlty Towers:

Bernard Cribbens was one of the few personalities that everyone liked, there's never been anything bad to say about him. 
David Warner too was an actor everyone knew but couldn't put a name to.

Actress and singer Nichelle Nichols, best known as Star Trek's communications officer Lieutenant Uhura, died Saturday night in Silver City, New Mexico. She was 89 years old.
Reputedly, she and William Shatner shared the first interracial kiss in a mainstream broadcast. This untrue - Nancy Sinatra / Sammy Davis Jr, amongst others, had done so before, and British TV predated that, both in live action plays and "Emergency Ward 10".

Temperance wrote:

I stopped being a source of illumination for anyone a long time ago.

That's simply not true Temp. Yours are often the most insightful of postings and can sometimes throw light on topics in ways which others might not have thought. Only today, for example, on the Words thread you pointed out that the first Elizabeth referred to herself as 'your Prince'. This was uncannily timely as it has helped me reframe the old prayer for the dead to suit today's sorrowful tidings:

"Of your charity pray for the soul of the most gracious, noble dame prince, our late sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth the Second."

I have always had a soft spot for Charles, feeling he was rather hard-done-by in the media, and because he was so close to me in age, and my sister and I used to pour over the books we had on the royal sisters, Elizabeth and Margaret.
I wanted to be still alive when he became king if only to see what title he took. I have probably said before that our history teacher at school didn't think he would be King Charles III since that would be seen by the Scots as unfortunate and disrespectful to Bonnie Prince Charlie (at least I think that was the reasoning - it's a long time since I did History at school). But he's been known as Charles for so long now that it would be hard for people to get round him being George VII.

I do feel it's fortunate that Boris Johnson is not still PM of Britain now or he would somehow want to put himself in the spotlight probably. I see in one of our main online news outlets that she has been referred to as Elizabeth or the queen without a capital letter. This seems a bit disrespectful to me.

I can't see NZ becoming a republic any time soon, especially as Maori see they signed the Te Tiriti o Waitangi with Queen Victoria and see that as their founding document with the English. And most NZers are quite happy as far as I can tell with the status quo.

Vizzer wrote:

Temperance wrote:

I stopped being a source of illumination for anyone a long time ago.

That's simply not true Temp. Yours are often the most insightful of postings and can sometimes throw light on topics in ways which others might not have thought. Only today, for example, on the Words thread you pointed out that the first Elizabeth referred to herself as 'your Prince'. This was uncannily timely as it has helped me reframe the old prayer for the dead to suit today's sorrowful tidings:

"Of your charity pray for the soul of the most gracious, noble dame prince, our late sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth the Second."

Tend toward Lady Jane Grey's "Good people, pray for me while I still live". Not really Protestant to pray for the soul of the deceased.

Thank you for kind words, Viz. Cheered me up no end.

I've been thinking about the death of Elizabeth I, too, and how the nation is stunned today in 2022, just as it was in March 1603. The country knew then - and now - that even "lasses unparalleled" must die, but somehow our late Queen, like her Tudor predecessor, seemed immortal. Here is John Stow:


Westminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people in their streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came to see the obsequy, and when they beheld her statue lying upon the coffin, there was such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man, neither doth any history mention any people, time or state to make like lamentation for the death of their sovereign...

It's not the maudlin outpourings that followed the death of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, just the realisation that we are waking up to a new era.

GG's comment about that brave, if fanatical, Protestant child's request for no prayers for her once she was dead was so interesting. I noticed with surprise that last night Lambeth announced that all Anglican churches will be open today, so that we can all go and pray for our departed monarch. This Archbishop always manages to get it wrong. Not that obscure Protestant theology really matters to many people these days, but I rather think our departed "Prince" does not need praying for - the rest of us here do, including her son, the new King, and his newly appointed Ministers of State. Thinking of the latter, one can only offer up a fervent prayer: "God help us."