Tom Roper's Weblog

Some recent obituaries

I've been saving these up, but I must mention that of Jana Kodicek, who lived near my mother in Cambr idge. My late father would give her old newspapers for her animals.
Times obituary
Cambridge Evening News
Others whose passing should be recorded include Agnes "Sis" Cunninhgam, Robert Quine, guitarist to Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Carl Rakosi and Peter Barnes, but the Times only allows free access to content for seven days, so most of these are no longer accessible. But a quick google will find lots more, especially in the cases of Agnes Cunnigham and Bob Quine.
I must also mention Leslie Morton, doyen of British medical librarianship. Leslie died a while back, on 17th February 2004.
Here's a quick list of tributes I can trace in the LIS journals . I'll try to make this more definitive.

Leslie Morton 1907–2004
Health Information and Libraries Journal June 2004, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 142-144(3) [by Michael Carmel and Shane Godbolt-TR]

Leslie T. Morton, 1907–2004
J Med Libr Assoc. 2004 July; 92 (3): 385–387
Shane Godbolt and T. Mark Hodges

I'm sure there was one in CILIP Update, but can't locate it right now.

Douglas Foskett

I found another example of the odd policy of the Times towards obituaries. One of the grand old men of British librarianship, Douglas Foskett, died. I only heard pf this thorugh the daily information service put out by CILIP, which referred me to a Times obituary. I always read the Times and I never miss the obituaries, so where was it? It certainly wasn't in the tabloid edition, so must have been only in the broadsheet and online editions, in spite of the assurances the paper gave when they introduced the tabloid that the content would be identical across the two print formats.

Elvin Jones

Elvin Jones, another jazzman gone. And by the serendipitous coincidences that make the obituaries such fascinating reading, he shares the Times pages with Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer who discovered the coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae

Des Warren and Barney Kessel

I haven't posted much about obituaries lately, nothing has caught my imagination for a long time. But then today, side by side in the Times, I found obituaries of Barney Kessel, the jazz guitarist and Des Warren the Shrewsbury picket jailed by the Heath government. Both heroes of mine.

Francis Sitwell

Today, Francis Sitwell, son of Sacheverell and nephew of Edith. His full Christian names: Francis Trajan Sacheverell. Had a career in PR,and advised Ken Livingstone in the campaign to save the GLC.

Father Cyril Barrett SJ

And today Father Cyril Barrett, Reader in Philosophy at Warwick. The obituarist says "he made no attempt to disguise his chafing at the Vatican's hierarchical politics and social conservatism" and quotes him as saying in a London restaurant on the day of the assassination attempt on the current Pope that "the only thing wrong with that bloody Turk was that he couldn't shoot straight".

Missing obits in Times compact edition

Odd: the Times web site lists some obits in today's paper that don't appear in the compact (ie tabloid) edition I bought at 6 this am, including that of the milliner Elfrieda Fluss .

Jeff Nuttall 1933-2004

"Painter. poet, writer, actor performance artist and musician who led the British "happening"

Last survivor of the battle of Jutland

This morning's Times has the obituary of Captain Henry Fancourt, last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, who died aged 103 on January 8th

More obits

I should not have spoken of my frustration with recent obituaries. Hard on the heels of Jennifer Ross came Dinsdale Landen and the Catalan who invented a child's sweet and commissioned Salvador Dali to design the wrapper. All made fine reading for obituary addicts like me. De mortuis nil nisi bonum,