Haydn Gwynne, actress, 1957-2023 – obituary The star of stage and screen was best known to TV viewers for the comedy Drop The Dead Donkey and as Camilla in sitcom The Windsors. Theatre producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh dedicated last night’s performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends to her “memory and extraordinary career”. The actress was … Read more
Benjamin Zephaniah, poet, 1958-2023 – obituary Unsurprisingly, in later life the Birmingham-born writer said he felt a close affinity with cultures which prized spoken verse. Zephaniah was a self-declared “naughty boy”, who found fame in the 1980s as a dub poet while meshing Jamaican patois with reggae rhyme. Dubbed Britain’s “people’s laureate”, he was awarded … Read more
Ryan O’Neal, 1941-2023, actor – obituary The commercial success of the film about star-crossed lovers should have established the actor as one of Hollywood‘s leading men. But despite his Oscar nomination, O’Neal never replicated his on-screen magic with follow-up roles. In the 1972 screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc? he played a distracted musicologist who falls … Read more
