Hauling Like A Brooligan

Stephen Gallagher

Category: obituary

  • Stan Barstow

    I’m sad to hear that novelist Stan Barstow has died at the age of 83. His Guardian obituary is here. I served as Northern Chair of the Writers’ Guild for a couple of years more than a decade ago, and Stan and his parter Diana Griffiths were two of the most reliable regulars at our…

  • John Barry

    Woke up this morning to the news that musician and film composer John Barry has died at the age of 77; I shouldn’t be taking it personally, but it’s hard not to. He had a rare gift for infusing high drama with a melancholy that made it soar.

  • Michael Sharvell-Martin

    You may not know the name, but if you’ve any familiarity with British TV comedy of the last 30 years you’ll immediately recognise the face… actor Michael Sharvell-Martin died of cancer of the oesophagus on October 27th. A consistent and solid player in scripted comedy (No Place Like Home, Terry and June), and a regular…

  • Robert Holdstock

    I just learned that Robert – Rob – Holdstock, a good man and a superior author, has died in intensive care after being laid low by an E Coli infection. He was 61. I first corresponded with Rob when he and Chris Morgan were co-editing Focus, a magazine on writing for writers and would-be writers,…

  • Edward Woodward

    I just heard on the news that actor Edward Woodward has died at the age of 79. This is a post that I wrote in September 2008.I came across my old autograph album when I was straightening the study a couple of weeks ago. Back when I was a child I used to study the…

  • John Stroud

    A shadow is cast across the day as I learn of the untimely death of John Stroud, a talented director and one of the most pleasant and engaging people I’ve had the honour of working with. Many of John’s achievements were in television comedy, so it was surely no coincidence that he brought a light…

  • Edgar Allan Poe

    Thanks to Stephen Volk for a reminder that tomorrow marks the bicentenary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe. Doesn’t matter which way you come at it, whether you see him as a giant of American literature or one of the key figures in a beloved genre, Edgar Allan Poe was The Business. As with…

  • Patrick McGoohan

    I just heard of the death of actor/writer/director Patrick McGoohan at the age of 80, following a short illness. A terrific and brooding screen presence, an actor of integrity and eccentricity, mad as a box of bats in the best possible way… otherwise how could he ever have become the creator and driving force of…

  • Michael Crichton

    A year or so after we moved into our current house we had a bookshelf collapse that was a consequence of a) the urge to display far too many cherished hardcovers on a screw-to-the-wall track system, and b) my total inability to put a secure screw into a plaster wall. One of the most cherished,…

  • Thomas M Disch

    I’m sad to hear that the death of Thomas M Disch has been reported. Tom Disch was my first real-live author, by which I mean the first one that I met and talked to in the flesh at my first convention – that was Yorcon 2 in Leeds in 1981, where he was the Guest…