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Robert Armstrong, who has died from a brain tumour aged 76, was a Guardian sports writer, specialising in football, rugby and tennis, his own game. Known for the “no frills” accuracy of his reports, he filed reassuringly ahead of deadline from World Cups and major tours in far-flung corners of the world, as well as from Wimbledon.

But he also left his mark on the paper for which he worked for almost 30 years as a highly effective National Union of Journalists (NUJ) official, championing better pay and conditions for his colleagues.

George Mackie, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 70, was a straightforward man, but one of paradox. He was a Kincardineshire Scot who lived in southern England, an Essex farmer who was also a socialist, a formidable Scottish rugby international who was notably soft-spoken. “A gentle giant, never the loudest around the dinner table, but usually the wisest,” said his friend Brian Wilson, the politician.

The son of Jeannie (nee Inglis Milne) and John Mackie, George sprang from a progressive farming dynasty in north-east Scotland. Radicalised by poverty he saw in Glasgow as a young man, his father became a leading Tribune Group leftwinger. MP for Enfield East (1959-74), he was a respected junior agriculture minister, later chairman of the Forestry Commission (1976-79) until Margaret Thatcher sacked him.

Peruvian politician and diplomat who served for two terms as the UN secretary general and helped to end the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, who has died aged 100, was a cautious and conservative Peruvian diplomat who became the secretary general of the United Nations for two terms during a difficult and dismal decade from 1982. He also served, briefly, as prime minister of Peru in 2000-01.

As secretary general, Pérez de Cuéllar faced a series of global crises, including the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent Gulf war, and he had to deal with the difficulties caused by the permanent hostility of the Ronald Reagan administration to the UN, as well as the consequent failure of the Americans to pay their dues.

Chef and restaurateur who, with his brother, Albert, transformed the British dining experience

The chef Michel Roux, who has died aged 78, was the younger half of the formidable partnership with his brother, Albert, that transformed the British restaurant scene in the late 1960s with their Michelin-starred restaurant Le Gavroche. Later, as sole director of the Waterside Inn, situated by an idyllic stretch of the Thames at Bray, Michel proved he was a chef’s chef. His menu was a statement of the most classic form of French cooking – nouvelle cuisine had no part to play. Luxury ingredients, many mousses and forcemeats, the finest of pâtisserie, were integral. Michelin soon recognised the quality and this restaurant gained three stars, perhaps the highest professional accolade available, in 1985, which it has retained for longer than any outside France.

From the outset, the Roux brothers’ style of cooking embraced wholeheartedly the standards and practices of classic haute cuisine while offering a refined interpretation of a more homely cuisine bourgeoise. The rapid success of Le Gavroche from its star-studded opening on Lower Sloane Street, London, in 1967, attended by Ava Gardner, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks Jr and a brace of marquesses, enabled the construction of a veritable empire, largely driven by the entrepreneurial spirit of Albert. The pair took in more restaurants, retail outlets, a restaurant supply business distributing produce shipped in from Paris markets, contract and outside catering, and production of vacuum-packed restaurant dishes. Michel was an integral part of this furious activity, while concentrating to an ever greater degree on the kitchen at the Waterside.

Comedian, actor and presenter of the long-running radio show The News Huddlines

For much of his long career, it could be a little difficult for people to get an exact fix on Roy Hudd, who has died aged 83. What was he – a comedian, an author, a radio satirist, a serious actor, a soap star, an archivist, or a leading authority on British music-hall and variety entertainment?

Hudd was all of these, but saw himself primarily as a man born too late to fulfil his dream of life as an old-style variety comic, which is how he started out in the late 1950s at the bottom of bills topped by artists such as the comic Max Miller and the male impersonator Hetty King.

One of the founders of the Northern Ireland Peace People and a joint Nobel laureate

The afternoon of 10 August 1976 in the Provisional IRA heartland of Andersonstown in west Belfast was hot and sunny. But, as ever, the ongoing conflict was being played out, this time with a British army patrol pursuing a suspect speeding car through streets busy with people shopping and walking.

At about 2pm, when the chase reached Finaghy Road North, soldiers opened fire on the speeding car, killing “Volunteer” Danny Lennon, the 23-year-old driver. His car immediately went out of control and veered on to the pavement outside a church. Before it careered to a halt against the railings, it had run down three children and their mother, Anne Maguire. Eight-year-old Joanne and her six-week-old brother, Andrew, died immediately while another brother, two-year-old John, died from his injuries the next day. Anne, after days in a coma, survived, but killed herself eight years later. Another son, Mark, aged seven, who was on his bicycle ahead of the family group escaped injury. A second person in the car fled the scene.

One of the great American country singers who had hits with The Gambler, Lucille and Islands in the Stream

Kenny Rogers, who has died aged 81, was a prolific hit-maker from the late 1960s into the 80s, and with songs such as Lucille, The Gambler and Coward of the County helped to create a bestselling crossover of pop and country material. “I did songs that were not country but were more pop,” he said in 2016. “If the country audience doesn’t buy it, they’ll kick it out. And if they do, then it becomes country music.”

Rogers’s knack for finding a popular song – he was modest about his own writing skills and preferred to pick songs from other writers – was unerring, bringing him huge hits with Don Schlitz’s The Gambler (1978), Lionel Richie’s Lady (1980), and, with Dolly Parton, the Bee Gees’ Islands in the Stream (1983) among many others. Though his record sales waned in the late 80s, he bounced back in his last years with three successful albums, The Love of God (2011), You Can’t Make Old Friends (2013) and Once Again It’s Christmas (2015). Altogether he recorded 65 albums and sold more than 165m records.

Folk singer whose TV appearances on The Frost Report in the 1960s made her a household name

In 1966, at the height of the folk music boom in Britain, David Frost’s satirical television show The Frost Report featured a young American folk singer whose thoughtful songs, strong voice, charm and good looks endeared her to audiences, turning her into a household name. Within a year, Julie Felix, who has died aged 81, was hosting her own television series, with an impressive list of special guests.

Having landed in England in 1964, Felix performed in folk clubs in London, including the famous Troubadour in Earls Court, and on the strength of a tape of her singing that was sent to Decca, she was signed to the record label. Living on the third floor of a Chelsea block of flats, she was on her way to her debut album’s launch when she met Frost, a fifth floor resident, in the lift. Frost tagged along and, impressed by her singing, persuaded the BBC to engage her for his forthcoming television series.

Illustrator who with the writer René Goscinny created the much-loved comic books featuring the exploits of Asterix the Gaul

On the balcony of a flat in Bobigny, near Paris, one afternoon in 1959, two men – the writer René Goscinny and the artist Albert Uderzo – were desperately seeking an idea for a comic strip. It had to be original, it had to be inspired by French culture and it had to be finished within three months, to go into the launch issue of a new magazine. Browsing through the history of France they settled on an idea that seemed full of possibilities: the history of the Gauls.

From their school days they recalled the name Vercingetorix and decided their chief characters’ names should also end in “ix”. Roman names would end in “us” and town names in “um”. That Eureka moment gave birth to Asterix the Gaul and a series of 38 books that have sold 377m copies in 111 languages, and have inspired 10 animated and four live-action films, a theme park and more than 100 licensed products.

Fast-talking comedian and impressionist who was one half of the TV comic duo Little and Large

The beaming, ebullient, fast-talking comedian and impressionist Eddie Large, who has died aged 78, having contracted Covid-19 while being treated for heart failure, was half of a double-act that partially eclipsed Morecambe and Wise on British television in the late 1970s and early 80s.

After years of success with the BBC had turned them into a national institution, Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise were enticed to ITV in 1978, but through a combination of inferior scripts and Morecambe’s deteriorating health the switch proved to be a disappointment, and marked the decline of Britain’s top double-act.

American soul singer who enjoyed huge success with hits such as Lean on Me and Ain’t No Sunshine

The career of Bill Withers, who has died aged 81 of heart complications, followed an unusual trajectory. He did not try to enter the music industry until after he had spent nine years in the US Navy, leaving the service in 1965 and moving to Los Angeles two years later. By the time he released his debut album, Just As I Am, in 1971 he was 33, an age at which many pop careers have already been and gone.

But Withers made up for lost time. His album was packed with memorable songs, including Harlem and Grandma’s Hands, and entered the US Top 40. Ain’t No Sunshine, his first single, reached No 3 and became one of the landmark songs in his career, despite lasting a scant two minutes. Inspired by Blake Edwards’ gruelling 1962 film about alcoholism, Days of Wine and Roses, it has become an enduring anthem of loneliness and heartbreak.

Eccentric aristocrat and chatelain of the Longleat safari park who was a favourite of newspaper gossip columns

As the chatelain of Longleat, one of the grandest Tudor mansions in Britain, the Marquess of Bath, who has died aged 87 after contracting Covid-19, devoted his life to a remorseless and self-conscious campaign to preserve the English aristocracy’s reputation for eccentricity.

An imposing 6ft 5in figure with flowing shoulder-length hair and a straggly beard, colourful waistcoats, shirts and trousers, often topped with a fez, he was a tabloid favourite, not only for his picturesque appearance and peculiar artistic tastes but for his string of mistresses, whom he referred to as his wifelets (he reckoned there to have been around 74 of them).

Stage and screen actor best known for playing Pussy Galore in the 1964 Bond film Goldfinger and Cathy Gale in TV’s The Avengers

Many actors might have objected to being associated throughout their careers with a character called Pussy Galore. But Honor Blackman, who has died aged 94, revelled in the notoriety of the role of the aviator she played in the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964).

Having been knocked out with a tranquilliser gun by a hench- man, the first thing Bond (Sean Connery) sees when he regains consciousness is Blackman’s face leaning over him. “Who are you?”, he asks. “My name is Pussy Galore,” she says. “I must be dreaming,” he replies. Later, after trying a few judo moves on each other, they fall into a different kind of clinch.

British motor racing ace who, although he never won the world championship, inspired devotion in followers of the sport

He was content to be known, he often said, as the man who never won the world championship: a way of distinguishing him from those of lesser gifts but better luck who had actually succeeded in winning motor racing’s principal honour. But it was the manner in which Stirling Moss, who has died aged 90, effectively handed the trophy to one of his greatest rivals that established his name as a byword for sporting chivalry, as well as for speed and courage.

It was after the Portuguese Grand Prix on the street circuit at Oporto, the eighth round of the 1958 series, that Moss voluntarily appeared before the stewards to plead the case of Mike Hawthorn, threatened with disqualification from second place for apparently pushing his stalled Ferrari against the direction of the track after spinning on his final lap. Moss, who had won the race in his Vanwall, testified that his compatriot had, in fact, pushed the car on the pavement, and had thus not been on the circuit itself. Hawthorn was reinstated, along with his six championship points. Three months later, when the season ended in Casablanca, he won the title by the margin of a single point from Moss, who was never heard to express regret over his gesture.

In 1989 I directed a film for the Owen family, owners of British Racing Motors (BRM), for whom Stirling Moss drove in 1959. David Owen arranged for drivers to take part in three days of filming at Donington Park. Stirling was there to be reunited with his P25, a car he thought was the best the team had produced. His old skills were still in evidence as he sped around the Leicestershire circuit.

This pre-dated the revolution in onboard cameras, so Stirling had to drive with the recording equipment in his lap. Despite this handicap he never complained.

Tomie dePaola was ahead of his time in terms of environmental awareness and gender roles. One of the loveliest picture books that I read to my now 40-something children was his Michael Bird-Boy (1975), whose understanding of the role of bees and flowers in the process transformed the practices of Boss Lady, who ran the environmentally unfriendly honey factory. I still have a copy, and the drawings and words are glorious.

It was very telling that the footballer Norman Hunter was elected by his peers as the first Player of the Year. While defenders are often overlooked for this honour, hewas recognised by his fellow professionals for his skill, determination and consistently high level of performance, as when the England manager Sir Alf Ramsey selected him ahead of Bobby Moore in the 1973 World Cup qualifier against Poland.

He will always be remembered for his commitment to his teammates. After collecting his medal in the 1972 Cup final, Norman declined to join the immediate celebrations, but walked back down from the royal box to help his teammate Mick Jones, who was suffering from a dislocated shoulder, and they climbed the steps together.

Bob May and I met through the game of bridge at Sydney University in the 1960s and he never forgot the daring “psych” no trump bid he pulled off against the US national team.

When members of an exclusive Sydney chess club declined to appear until after dinner, Bob led the university team in breaking into the cupboards, setting up the boards and starting the clocks in their absence.

My grandfather, Roger Westman, who has died aged 80, was an innovative and accomplished architect, and a great polymath. He was also a loving grandfather, husband, father and brother. He was passionate about gardens, music and ballet and food.

Roger spent a lifetime surrounded by books. It was his aunt, Margaret, who first nurtured his love of poetry. Reading was his favourite pastime from an early age, and he took an interest in everything, including fleas, art history and natural history. He believed that culture was classless and there to be enjoyed by everyone.

My friend and colleague Tony Morgan, who has died aged 83 after contracting Covid-19, was one of the heroes of the early days of computers. As a computer engineer from the late 1950s, he was responsible for the installation of the pioneering Leo computers worldwide, including for the GPO (now BT) for telephone billing. After a 38-year career he remained an active member of the Leo Heritage Project, using his unrivalled knowledge to identify the company’s artefacts.

Born in Kenton, near Harrow, Middlesex, to William Morgan, an architect, and Millie (nee Ferguson), Tony went to Harrow County grammar school and, after getting four A-levels, did his national service with the RAF, where he was trained as an air-radar fitter.

My mentor and friend Harry Olúdáre Garuba, who has died of leukaemia aged 61, was a poet and professor of English and African studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. A self-effacing but penetrating literary scholar and critical thinker, he advanced theories of reading (“animist materialism”) and translation-cum-textual circulation (“lateral textuality”).

His debut collection, Shadow and Dream and Other Poems (1982), published when he was only 24, revealed a poet of striking originality, sensitivity and tenderness. In 1987, it was first runner-up to La Tradition du Songe (1985), by the Congolese poet Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard, in the inaugural All-Africa Okigbo prize for poetry endowed by Wole Soyinka (after receiving the 1986 Nobel prize for literature) in honour of his contemporary, the poet Christopher Okigbo who was killed in the Nigeria-Biafra civil war in 1967.

My grandmother Edith Redstone, who has died aged 101, was a co-author, in her 70s, of the popular book Growing Old Disgracefully, which suggested ways in which women can get the most out of their later years. Its publication in 1993 led to a global tour by Edith and its five other authors, and in the UK precipitated the launch of a nationwide network of Growing Old Disgracefully groups that still exists today.

Edith met her co-authors – all women and all over 60 - in the early 1990s on a course about ageing at the Hen House co-operative in Yorkshire, where they hatched the idea of the book. Subtitled “new ideas for getting the most out of life”, it challenged accepted views of growing old, and encouraged readers to learn to age with a sense of self-esteem and playfulness.

My father, Paul Kennedy, who has died aged 78 after suffering from pancreatic cancer, was a writer and sociologist, and a hugely popular lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. His final book, Vampire Capitalism (2018), was a prescient study of the devastating effects of liberal capitalism on both the masses and the environment. He also co-authored, with Robin Cohen, the influential Global Sociology (2000), published in eight languages.

His early published works, including Ghanaian Businessmen (1980) and African Capitalism (1988), focused on development issues in west Africa, where his sympathy towards indigenous entrepreneurs was viewed as heresy by the Marxists dominating the field in the 1970s and 80s. In the late 90s he co-founded the Global Studies Association, working with academics from all over the world to analyse the impact of globalisation on the lives of ordinary people.

Fighter against apartheid in South Africa who spent 22 years in jail after being convicted with Nelson Mandela in the Rivonia trial

Denis Goldberg, who has died aged 87, was sentenced to life imprisonment alongside Nelson Mandela and nine others in the 1964 Rivonia trial, in which he was found guilty by the South African authorities of sabotage.

The only white man to be convicted and, at 31, the youngest of the defendants, Goldberg was a mainstay of the ANC’s military operation in Cape Town, obtaining bomb ingredients and instructing recruits on how to handle them. There was no doubt about his guilt, and he did not deny it.

Head of BBC radio drama who was instrumental in the success of Joe Orton, Sue Townsend, Tom Stoppard and others

To readers of books, John Tydeman is a fictional BBC producer who loomed large in the literary aspirations of Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole. To Townsend, as for many other writers, he was the real-life radio drama producer who encouraged her, produced her first radio play about the secret diary of “Nigel” Mole, and then introduced her to the publishers Methuen.

As with another of Tydeman’s proteges, Joe Orton, Townsend’s success was dizzying. Between the debut of Nigel in January 1982 and the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ that September – simultaneously read as a serial on Radio 4 – Townsend had provided Adrian with a book’s worth of diary entries and become a publishing sensation. For the rest of Townsend’s life, Adrian would continue to submit poetry to Tydeman, who would continue to reply with growing exasperation. His letters, with Adrian’s poems, were published by Penguin in 2017.

Textile designer whose colourful creations helped banish postwar greyness

The textile designer Althea McNish, who has died aged 95, was responsible for some of the 20th century’s most memorable printed fabrics. A hugely influential figure in the world of interior design and fashion, she was also the first woman from the West Indies to rise to international prominence in her field. She claimed to see everything “through a tropical eye”, and her greatest contribution was to infuse designs created in Britain with a feel of the Caribbean.

Her work from the late 1950s onwards appealed to young consumers who were desperate to move beyond the greyness of the immediate post-second world war years, and right from the beginning of her career she attracted commissions to design fabrics for big names such as Liberty and Heal’s. “She led the way, overthrowing the sterile rules of taste that had previously shaped British and international design,” said the designer and curator Christine Checkinksa.

McNish also worked on dress fabrics for Zika Ascher’s textile company, which supplied them to French fashion houses, including Dior. Her work was regularly featured in glossy magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

Cellist of the Amadeus String Quartet for four decades

The cellist Martin Lovett, who has died aged 93 after contracting Covid-19, acted as the musical conscience of the Amadeus String Quartet. When the playing of his three colleagues – all Austrian exiles – threatened to become too sweet, Lovett could be relied on to bring them back to the right side of good taste with a finely drawn phrase from his Stradivarius instrument.

Like Hermann Busch, a player he deeply admired, of the Busch Quartet, Lovett displayed qualities that could be overlooked when set against the wayward genius of the leader, Norbert Brainin, the virtuosity of the violist, Peter Schidlof, and the solid accomplishment of the second violinist, Siegmund Nissel. And yet his very dependability, his quintessentially British avoidance of anything that smacked of showiness or gloss, made their own contributions to the quartet’s four decades of success.

Singer whose joyful vocals on My Boy Lollipop took Jamaican music to new audiences

With international sales of 5m copies in 1964, the year of its release, the hit single My Boy Lollipop, sung by Millie, who has died aged 72, “opened the door for Jamaican music to the world,” said the producer Chris Blackwell. He had flown the 16-year-old Millie Small from Kingston to London to manage her career. Millie’s shrill, joyful vocals, married to a galloping ska rhythm in Olympic Studios in London in an arrangement by the Jamaican master guitarist Ernest Ranglin, were beamed out all that summer from the new pirate radio stations, such as Caroline, that were instrumental in helping promote the record. In May 1964, two months after the release of My Boy Lollipop, Millie was given a guest appearance on the ITV special Around the Beatles.

In both the UK and the US, My Boy Lollipop was a No 2 hit, kept off the top slot respectively by the Searchers and the Beach Boys. In America Millie rode the slipstream of the British Invasion started by the Beatles six months earlier; in New York she stepped off a plane – dubbed the Lollipop Special by a clever publicist – from the UK to a 30-strong police guard; fans screamed as she was presented with what was said to be the world’s largest lollipop.

Co-founder of the pioneering German electronic band Kraftwerk

As one of the chief architects of the electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk, Florian Schneider, who has died of cancer aged 73, helped revolutionise popular music. Where guitars, bass and drums had long been considered its essential building blocks, Kraftwerk paved the way for synth-pop, techno, hip-hop and electronica, in the process proving that microchips and machines could have not only soul, but a sense of humour too. The list of artists whose work is indebted to Kraftwerk, even if they did not always know it, is endless, but includes David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Simple Minds, New Order, The Orb, Madonna, Neil Young, Jay-Z, Afrika Bambaataa, Coldplay and Daft Punk. In 1997 the New York Times described Kraftwerk as “the Beatles of electronic dance music”.

With Schneider and Ralf Hütter proving the main creative impetus, Kraftwerk (German for “power station”) reached their pivotal moment with the release of their fourth album, Autobahn (1974), whose 23-minute title track – a euphoric electronic ode to the joys of driving on Germany’s high-speed motorways, delivered with a light and whimsical touch – became emblematic of the group’s sound and approach. The album reached No 4 in Britain, while the single version of Autobahn reached the the UK Top 20 and the German Top 10. This revolution in synthetic music earned Kraftwerk a spot on BBC television’s science programme Tomorrow’s World in 1975. They subsequently scored a UK chart-topping single, The Model, released with Computer Love (1981), but Kraftwerk’s influence was much further-reaching than mere chart positions would suggest.

Specialist in the control of chemical and biological warfare who guided experts and policymakers from east and west

Julian Perry Robinson, who has died aged 78, combined academic research with behind-the-scenes advocacy to enhance controls on some of the most inhumane weapons in the world. His focus was on issues related to chemical and biological warfare (CBW) and the international efforts to eradicate the use or possession of such weapons.

In the late 1960s, with cold war differences between the major powers on the control of biological weapons, he examined the challenges of CBW in factual terms rather than the rhetoric of the time. A key concept Julian promoted – that all disease-causing organisms and the toxins they produce should be considered biological weapons, unless held for clearly peaceful purposes – became the core of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, the first treaty to ban a whole class of weapons of mass destruction. This concept, which became known as the “general purpose criterion”, has meant the convention has not been overtaken by scientific and technological developments.

Psychologist whose 50-year study transformed attitudes to people with Down’s syndrome

In 1964, Janet Carr, a clinical psychologist, was asked to work on a follow-up study of 54 six-week-old babies with Down’s syndrome at the Maudsley hospital in London. Initially Carr, who has died aged 92, was going to track the children only until they were four, but it became one of the longest follow-up studies in the world.

In 2014, a party was held at the House of Lords to celebrate the study running for 50 years. Chris Oliver, the director of the Cerebra centre for neurodevelopmental disorders at Birmingham University, commented: “The longest follow-up studies we have are usually five to seven years. So that 50-year follow-up is absolutely remarkable.”

Renowned Welsh physicist whose work helped to forge Britain’s reputation as a global leader in climate science

The late 1980s marked a key moment for environmental science, matching triumph with looming disaster. Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had been observed since the late 1950s, at the remote Pacific observatory of Mauna Loa, but it was only after three decades of further research that concern over what this rapid accumulation of greenhouse gases might mean reached the desks of the world’s leaders.

At the time, politicians appeared receptive to scientific warnings in a way they rarely have been since. In 1987, world governments concluded the Montreal protocol, which still stands today as probably the most successful environmental intervention, phasing out the use of the ozone-depleting chemicals that had threatened to destroy the planet’s protective atmospheric layer.

Pioneering musician, whose songs Tutti Frutti and Long Tall Sally were among the most flamboyant of the rock’n’roll era, has died aged 87. We look back over his life and career

• Little Richard dies aged 87

The celebrated actor had a turbulent upbringing before becoming world-famous for playing two perfect nannies. Now she’s bonding with a new generation of children through her storytelling podcast

“I’ll tell you what, shall I go outside?” Julie Andrews asks. We are talking by phone, but, alas, the reception inside her home on Long Island is, she says, “always terrible”. Torturous minutes pass in which I can hear only fragments of her conversation, and if anyone knows of a sweeter agony than being barely able to hear Andrews’ still lovely, melodious voice, I don’t want to know what it is. Eventually, I have to tell her this phone conversation isn’t working.

“I can stand out in my garden, although it is a bit nippy …” Andrews suggests.