Category: people

“British writers were yesterday coming to terms with the death of the doyenne of the London literary scene, Pat Kavanagh, paying tribute to her strength of spirit, tenacity and straight-talking. Kavanagh, 68, who was married to the novelist Julian Barnes, was at the summit of her profession, representing writers including Ruth Rendell, Margaret Drabble, Robert Harris, Joanna Trollope, Andrew Motion, Clive James, and Wendy Cope.”

“Life appears to be imitating art in a drama convulsing the Czech Republic: an accusation that Milan Kundera, one of Eastern Europe’s most celebrated writers, denounced a Western intelligence agent to Czechoslovakia’s Communist police when he was a 21-year-old student. The agent, Miroslav Dvoracek, served 14 years in jail, including hard labor in a uranium mine.”

Or, how a Tuscan merchant tried to pass himself off as heir to the throne of France, forged letters from the King of Hungary, and threw a (little) wrench into the Hundred Years’ War.

The Juilliard-trained singer found fame on television with husband Ernie Kovacs, on Broadway as Daisy Mae in Li’l Abner, and as the Muriel Cigars spokesmodel who purred, “Why don’t you pick one up and smoke it sometime?”

An English painter and teacher “for whom imagination linked the philosopher’s view with the painter’s.”

“On Monday night, at Stratford’s Festival Theatre, some of the most distinguished names in this country will gather to pay tribute to Richard Monette, who died on Sept.9 at the age of 64… Saucy, irreverent, ready for anything and totally in love with the theatre. That’s how I want to remember Richard Monette.”

“Peter Vansittart, the English writer who breathed new life into the historical novel by mingling myth with modernity, and by injecting 20th-century preoccupations into historical settings as various as Roman Britain, medieval France and 16th-century Germany, died on Oct. 4, in Ipswich, Suffolk.”

“Ex-US Secretary of State Colin Powell has joined a hip-hop band on stage in London to dance and sing in a celebration of African culture. America’s former top diplomat took centre stage along with Nigerian group Olu Maintain at the Africa Rising Festival in the Royal Albert Hall.”

“Neal Hefti, a former big band trumpeter, arranger and composer who worked with Count Basie and Woody Herman and later composed the memorable themes for the movie ‘The Odd Couple’ and the campy hit TV series ‘Batman,’ has died.”

A new biography reveals that the famous teacher at the King of Siam’s court was far from the upright Welsh widow of The King and I. She was actually “a mixed-race Anglo-Indian army brat,” a multilingual con woman who became a popular lecturer and globe-trotting journalist.