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 Friday 16:00-16:30
Sunday 20:30-21:00 (rpt)
Radio 4's weekly obituaries programme |
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This week |
Friday 9th February 2007
(Rpt) Sunday 11th February |
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Ma Tambo
Anti-apartheid activist who has died aged 77.
Adelaide Tambo was one of the heroines of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. She married the African National Congress President Oliver Tambo in 1956 and for many years the couple led the liberation campaign from exile in London. Adelaide Tambo’s commitment to political action started as a ten year old when she saw her 82 year old grandfather arrested and flogged by the police in the main square of her home town. The young Adelaide sat with the old man until he regained consciousness, vowing she would fight those responsible till the end. She became a courier for the African National Congress at the age of 15 and met her future husband at the launch of a youth league branch.
Matthew Bannister talks to her friend Tenby Nobadula and to writer and political campaigner Ronald Segal.
Ma Tambo was born July 18th 1929. She died January 31st 2007. |
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Frankie Laine
Singer who has died aged 93.
Frankie Laine had a muscular voice which earned him the nickname “old leather lungs” – but he was a singing superstar in the 1950s and sold millions of records on both sides of the Atlantic. Frankie was born Francesco Paulo LoVecchio in Chicago the son of immigrants from Sicily. His showbusiness career was slow to take off – he worked as a machinist, car salesman and bouncer and earned money from the dance marathons of the depression. In fact he set an all time dance record of 3,501 hours in 145 consecutive days in Atlantic City in 1932.
It was after the war that Frankie Laine really hit the big time. His boss at Mercury Records steered him in the direction of songs with a Western tinge, most famously the theme from the TV series Rawhide, Mule Train and a cover of the theme from High Noon. It was a style which the film director Mel Brooks satirised when he asked Laine to sing the title song of his western spoof Blazing Saddles.
Frankie Laine was particularly popular in the UK – he spent eighteen weeks at number one in the British Charts with “I Believe” and broke attendance records at the London Palladium.
Matthew Bannister talks to lyricst Don Black.
Frankie Laine was born March 30th 1913. He died Feburary 6th 2007. |
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Sir Victor Le Fanu
Serjeant At Arms who has died aged 82.
Sir Victor Le Fanu was Serjeant at Arms of the House of Commons from 1982 to 1989. But he had risen through the ranks, holding various assistant and deputy serjeant at arms posts for more than twenty years before succeeding to the top job. Sir Victor came from a military family and joined the Coldstream guards when he left school at seventeen. He served in Italy during the second world war and held a number of staff posts in peacetime. But in 1963 he started work at the House of Commons. As Serjeant at Arms Sir Victor was responsible for security and for disciplining MPs who broke the rules – a task which he was said to perform with the utmost courtesy and dignity.
Matthew Bannister talks to Labour MP Gwyneth Dunwoody.
Sir Victor Le Fanu was born January 24th 1925. He died February 6th 2007. |
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Gian Carlo Menotti
Composer who has died aged 95.
Gian Carlo Menotti wasn’t one of those composers who struggled all their lives for recognition to die in poverty. Far from it. His first opera was performed by the New York Met when he was only twenty six and he went on to write many critically acclaimed and commercially successful pieces. “The Consul” and “The Saint of Bleeker Street” both won Pulitzer prizes and some in America described him as the successor to Puccini. Perhaps his best known work was “Amahl and the Night Visitors” – commissioned as a Christmas Special by NBC television.
Gian Carlo Menotti was born in Italy but sent to study music at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia at the age of sixteen. He founded the Spoleto arts festival in his native country and ended his life living in Scotland.
Music critic Michael White gives a personal tribute.
Gian Carlo Menotti was born July 7th 1911. He died February 1st 2007 |
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Hans Wegner
Danish furniture designer who has died aged 92.
The Danish furniture designer Hans Wegner said “a chair is to have no backside – it should be beautiful from all sides and angles” Wegner’s craftsmanship and painstaking attention to detail won him almost all the major design honours and his chairs are now held in many museums around the world. His most famous chair “The Chair” was chosen to seat Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy during their 1960 US presidential debate.
Matthew Bannister talks to Christopher Wilk, Keeper of Furniture at the Victoria and Albert museum, and to Sam Holst Pederson the owner of the furniture company 'PP Mobler' and to Hans Wegner’s daughter, Marianne.
Hans Jorgen Wegner, furniture designer, born April 2 1914; died January 26 2007
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