Recent necrology, March 2016

Some well-known people who have died recently

• Asa Briggs, 1921-2016
  Wide-ranging social historian and university administrator who delighted in the throw-away ephemera of everyday life

• Anita Brookner, 1928-2016
  Art historian and Booker Prize-winning novelist whose genteel heroines fear to take the plunge

• John Christian, 1942-2016
  Scholar who championed the Pre-Raphaelites and explored the impish side of Edward Burne-Jones

• Pat Conroy, 1945-2016
  Novelist whose fictionalised accounts of a traumatic childhood were turned into successful films

• Ronnie Corbett, 1930-2016
  A fine comic and an entertainment treasure

• Peter Maxwell Davies, 1934-2016
  English composer, conductor and one-time enfant terrible who became Master of the Queen’s Music

• Patty Duke, 1946-2016
  Troubled actress who won an Oscar at age 16 for her portrayal of the blind and deaf Helen Keller

• Keith Emerson, 1944-2016
  Virtuoso keyboardist and co-founder of Emerson, Lake & Palmer whose amped-up takes on the classics helped define ‘prog rock’

• Nikolaus Harnoncourt, 1929-2016
  Celebrated Austrian conductor, the ‘pope’ of baroque music revival

• Jim Harrison, 1937-2016
  American author of poetry, fiction and essays, best known for Legends of the Fall

• Barry Hines, 1939-2016
  Author and screenwriter who adapted his popular novel A Kestrel for a Knave into the film Kes

• Henry Hobhouse, 1924-2016
  Author of Seeds of Change who explained how human history has been shaped by five plants

• Keith Jeffery, 1952-2016
  Historian who revealed how spying nuns and exploding filing cabinets helped the fledgling MI6

• Imre Kertesz, 1929-2016
  Hungarian novelist who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature

• Nancy Reagan, 1921-2016
  American actress and wife of the 40th United States President

• Frank Torley, 1941-2016
  Television broadcasting producer, the voice of Country Calendar

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