01 February 2012 12:00 AM
The actor Colin Tarrant was a permanent fixture on television for 12 years as the by-the-book, disciplinarian Inspector Andrew Monroe in The Bill. He took the role of Sun Hill police station's third most senior officer at the height of the programme's success, joining itin 1990, six years after it had been launched on ITV.
01 February 2012 12:00 AM
The most neglected of all the "Big Beasts" of British art, Peter de Francia, has died at 90. Will this at last trigger a re-evaluation , especially of his extraordinary Drawing-Cycles? Despite his 14 years as Professor of Painting at the RCA (1972-86) de Francia never became a household name. There is no monograph on his work, and there has never been a comprehensive retrospective, though in the past decade his art has been more visible than ever before, prominent at both Tates as well as in commercial galleries. Like so many other painters of my generation, I found in de Francia an inspiring mentor. His book on Léger, published by Yale in 1983, does convey some of his courage and generosity of spirit, but the fire and wit of his conversation are lost forever.
01 February 2012 12:00 AM
Sir Tom Cowie spent 45 years building up the business which became, to his disgust, "Arriva" buses, and after parting with it in 1993, set out to conquer the world again with a metal-importation warehousing enterprise set in his native Sunderland's old shipyards that now encompasses China and Singapore. Leadership fascinated him, and his judgment proved wrong only in an affair close to his heart, the fortunes of Sunderland football club, to which, while chairman from 1980-86 he disastrously appointed Lawrie McMenemy as manager. McMenemy left in 1987 and the Black Cats were relegated for the first time to the Third Division.
31 January 2012 12:00 AM
Bob Anderson was a Royal Marine and British Olympian who went on to become one of the most sought-after fencing choreographers and film fight directors. Over nearly 60 years he worked with the likes of Errol Flynn, Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas and staged some of film's most famous duelling scenes. But few were aware of the influence he had on some of Hollywood's favourite films.
31 January 2012 12:00 AM
Emmanuel Cooper made pots with volcanic, cratered surfaces and bright, singing colours that came as a surprise from someone schooled in the tradition of domestic, brown earthenware. I first met him early in his career, in 1969. He was living in a basement flat in London's Westbourne Grove, as yet ungentrified. He was a kind of urban simple-lifer, floating around clad in an exotic North African djellabah, cradling a cat and serving scented tea in one of his own oatmeal-coloured teapots. But the hippy appearance was deceptive. Adjoining the flat was a small pottery studio, where, with the aid of an assistant, he made hand-thrown tableware in quantities large enough to supply London restaurants: the Hard Rock Café was one of his customers. By the end of his life, through a formidable capacity for hard work, he had transformed his own practice, and had also become much more than a potter: a writer, educator and a tireless advocate for ceramic art.
31 January 2012 12:00 AM
There are few journalists who had a contacts book that Fleet Street would have killed for, but the Morning Star's industrial correspondent Ken Graves belonged to that select group. Born in Birmingham into working class family, he didn't get much of an education due to his father having to move around to get work. Like most young people until the Thatcher era, Graves was expected to get an apprenticeship in a factory, but when he was 15 a road accident broke one of his arms. This never healed fully, so restricted the work he would be able to do. He left school with no qualifications and set about educating himself with a gusto that was a trademark of his professional life.
30 January 2012 12:00 AM
Though Betty Jane Rhodes, a pretty, blue-eyed blonde singer-actress with a vivacious smile and buoyant personality, rarely moved out of the "B" movie ranks, she will be recalled fondly for her lively renderings of such wartime numbers as "The Fleet's In" and '"On the Swing Shift".
30 January 2012 12:00 AM
José Luis Alvarez Enparantza, known by his pen-name of Txillardegi, was a key figure on the left wing of Basque nationalism for over half a century.
28 January 2012 12:00 AM
There can hardly be any footballer, from any era, who gave more loyal service to one club than did Ernie Gregory to West Ham United. As a big, dominant, charismatic goalkeeper he was a linchpin of the Upton Park side for a dozen seasons in the middle years of the 20th century, a reassuring and often inspirational influence as the Hammers won the Second Division title in 1958.
28 January 2012 12:00 AM
Vadim Glowna, who died on 24 January at the age of 70, was an actor and film director best known outside his native Germany for his role in Sam Peckinpah's Second World War drama Cross of Iron (1977) alongside James Coburn and Maximilian Schell.
28 January 2012 12:00 AM
The US District Judge Wesley Brown, who died on 23 January at the age of 104, was the oldest sitting federal judge in US history.
28 January 2012 12:00 AM
Alex Eadie, Labour MP for Midlothian from 1966 until 1992, was my parliamentary neighbour for a quarter of a century.
27 January 2012 12:00 AM
Isi Metzstein, a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany, arrived in Scotland in 1939 and became one of the most significant figures in British post-war architecture. As a practitioner and an educator, the acerbic and provocative "Glaswegian adop-tee" enriched the lives of those he met professionally and socially, and influenced generations of architects now working in Scotland and all over the world.
27 January 2012 12:00 AM
Johnny Silvo was the sort of populist folk singer for whom Britain's folk scene coined the expression "folk entertainer". He was an old-school folkie whose repertoire of folk and folk-blues standards, jazz and blues material chimed with the country's folk scene in the 1960s and 1970s in particular. His name seldom figures in accounts of the subject, except maybe as a marginal note associated with Sandy Denny – the female lead singer of Fairport Convention and Fotheringay and Led Zeppelin IV guest vocalist – through her time singing with the Johnny Silvo Folk Four and their joint album Sandy & Johnny (1967). Silvo's audience, concentrated in Western Europe and Scandinavia, did not care and stayed true to the end.
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