Eccentric Lives : The Daily Telegraph Book of 21st Century Obituaries

In the late 1980s the Daily Telegraph transformed the traditionally dry and stolid world of obituaries, ushering in a new way of writing about the dead that was vivid, gently subversive and richly comic. Telegraph obituaries became a byword for entertaining journalism, celebrated for their deadpan tone and sympathetic eye for human quirks and eccentricities. Here is a gallery of the most entertaining of these eccentric lives from the recent past, most of them never before published in book form. They amply demonstrate that in an age of committees and bureaucracy and increasing pressure to conform, eccentrics of all kinds have continued to thrive. From the oddball to the prophet, they have ploughed their own furrow. These miniature biographies are charming, funny, oft en moving, but always compulsively readable.

In the late 1980s the Daily Telegraph transformed the traditionally dry and stolid world of obituaries, ushering in a new way of writing about the dead that was vivid, gently subversive and richly comic. Telegraph obituaries became a byword for entertaining journalism, celebrated for their deadpan tone and sympathetic eye for human quirks and eccentricities.Here is a gallery of the most entertaining of these eccentric lives from the recent past, most of them never before published in book form. They amply demonstrate that in an age of committees and bureaucracy and increasing pressure to conform, eccentrics of all kinds have continued to thrive. From the oddball to the prophet, they have ploughed their own furrow. These miniature biographies are charming, funny, oft en moving, but always compulsively readable.Includes: Anthony Carter, Graham Mason, Eileen Fox, Viscount Mountgarret, Portland Mason, Maurice Flitcroft, Hugh Massingbird, John Michell, Sathya Sai Baba, Camille Wolff, Canon John Andrew , The Duchess of Alba, Jeremy Thorpe, Gerry Wells, The Dowager Marchioness of Reading, Anne Naysmith, John Simopoulos, Viv Nicholson, Sir Raymond Carr, Richard West, Ann Barr, Brian Sewell, Roy Dommett, Sabrina, John Jones, The Earl of Haddington, Johnny Barnes, Raine, Countess Spencer, Benjamin Creme, Stanley Reynolds, The Right Reverend Raymond Casey, Michael ‘Dandy-Kim’ Caborn-Waterfield, Sarah Holman, Sir David Tang, Gavin Stamp, Mark E Smith, Hannah Hauxwell, Emma Smith, Maurizio ‘Zanza’ Zanfanti, Nigel Morgan, Baroness Trumpington, The Reverend Angus Smith, The Marquess of Bath, Roy Kerridge, The Reverend David Johnson, David Twiston Davies, Gwenda Wilkin, Naim Attallah, Clive Murphy, The Alaafin of Oyo,