Recent necrology, May 2014

Some well-known people who have died recently

• Maya Angelou, 1928-2014
  American poet, novelist and civil rights activist

• Jack Brabham, 1926-2014
  Driver with an engineering flair who was the first man to win the Formula 1 title in a car of his own making

• Lorraine Cohen, 1943-2014
  Woman at the centre of an infamous international drug case

• Don Donovan, 1933-2014
  New Zealand writer and illustrator

• Radu Florescu, 1925-2014
  Romanian historian who claimed Bram Stoker based Count Dracula on real-life Vlad the Impaler

• H. R. Giger, 1940-2014
  Swiss artist who brought his hellish, eroticised creatures to Hollywood, winning an Oscar for Alien

• Antony Hopkins, 1921-2014
  Composer and conductor whose infectious enthusiasm animated his BBC broadcasts for four decades

• Robert Masters, 1917-2014
  Violinist who played at the Coronation, taught Nigel Kennedy and created Yehudi Menuhin’s orchestra

• Barbara Murray, 1929-2014
  Actress from the Rank Charm School who starred in Passport to Pimlico

• Mary Soames, 1922-2014
  Last of Churchill’s children, who acted as ADC to her father and wrote an acclaimed life of her mother

• Mary Stewart, 1916-2014
  Author of romantic thrillers who wrote for love not money, and had an intuitive feel for the past

• Philip Sugden, 1947-2014.
  Historian who brought a new, much-needed scholastic rigour to Jack the Ripper’s crimes

• Leslie Thomas, 1931-2014
  Comic novelist whose bestselling The virgin soldiers detailed privates on parade and in the jungle

• Joe Wilder, 1922-2014
  Trumpeter noted for the beauty of his tone who played with Count Basie and the New York Philharmonic