Free Republic

LIEUTENANT COLONEL RUPERT MAYNE, who has died aged 91, enjoyed a colourful career during the Second World War with British Intelligence in India, a land which had attracted generations of his family before him.Maynes had been serving in India since the mid-18th century, and many had died there, as 16 military graves on the subcontinent bear witness. Among those to make an impression was Lt William Mayne, a 19th century cavalry officer who rode a handsome grey charger and was considered so lethal on the battlefield that he was known to the Pathans as "Death on the Pale Horse".In 1857, ...

IRINA BROMLEY, who has died aged 85, was born in the last days of Tsarist Russia, heiress to vast estates in Estonia conferred on her forebears by Catherine the Great, and apparently destined for a life of aristocratic privilege; the turbulence of the 20th century and her own dauntless courage ensured a more interesting outcome.She was born Baroness Irene Isabella Margarete Paulina Caecilia von Meyendorff ex den hause Uxkull (she changed her first name to Irina when she later became a British citizen) on June 6 1916 at Reval (present day Talinn), the eldest child of Fyodor, her deeply conservative ...

SIR JAMES CABLE, who has died aged 80, was both a diplomat and one of the most influential naval strategic thinkers of the last half-century.His Gunboat Diplomacy, first published in 1971, rescued that term from its pejorative Victorian overtones and brought to public attention the continuing importance of naval power in what Cable called "Violent Peace".Until the end of the 19th century there had been very little theoretical study of seapower. It was largely left to naval officers to work out, on the basis of practical experience, how to apply force at sea in the pursuit of wider strategic goals.When ...

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL ROLAND "RONNIE" DEGG, who has died aged 92, was one of the outstanding battalion commanders of the Second World War; in 1944 he won a DSO while commanding the 1st Battalion, the South Staffordshire Regiment, on Chindit operations in Burma.Degg, who after school worked in the coal mines, had enlisted in the ranks during the General Strike. He went on to be commissioned in the field and to be appointed second-in-command of his battalion when it formed part of Brigadier Mike Calvert's 77th Brigade - one of five brigades in Special Force, which was committed to action behind Japanese ...

HOWARD FINSTER, who has died aged 84, was a Baptist minister and folk artist who used images from popular culture to spread his religious message.Finster created more than 46,000 "sermons in paint" which featured representations ranging from Elvis Presley, George Washington and Coca-Cola bottles to divine themes and visions of Hell which warned: "HELL IS A HELL OF A PLACE" with "NO COLD COKES". His work also appeared on the covers of rock albums by bands such as R.E.M. and Talking Heads.Finster took up painting in his forties when a spot of paint on his finger turned into a face ...

BEVERLEY ("BEV") SNOOK, who has died aged 72, was a former chairman of the Royal Aero Club and an air racing competitor so exuberant that he might have been described as accident-prone.In 1961 Snook was piloting one of his two Mark IX Spitfires in the London to Cardiff air race when the fighter caught fire after landing at Exeter airport. He explained afterwards: "I had taxied for nearly a mile when the plane suddenly exploded and burst into flames. Fortunately, I was able to jump out." He escaped with only cuts and bruises.Tales of Snook's misadventures were legion. On one ...

ROY BOULTING, who has died aged 87, formed with his twin brother John one of the most successful partnerships in the history of British film-making; taking turns with each other as producer and director, their joint work included such films as Brighton Rock (1947), Lucky Jim (1957) and I'm All Right Jack (1959).Their films both caught and shaped the mood of the times, graduating from wartime propaganda to the satirical examination of institutions, among them the Army and the Church. But although they gained the reputation of angry young men, in truth their work was mildly radical rather than revolutionary. ...

MICHAEL TORRENS-SPENCE, who has died aged 87, won the DSO, DFC, AFC and Greek DFC during wartime service in the Mediterranean as a pilot with the Fleet Air Arm; in the course of his career he achieved the possibly unique distinction of having held commissions in the Royal Navy, the RAF, the Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. On the night of November 11 1940, 21 Swordfish "Stringbag" aircraft from the carrier Illustrious flew off in two waves to mount one of the most daring naval air raids ever attempted - on the Italian main battle fleet at anchor in ...

WING COMMANDER ROLAND "BEE" BEAMONT, who has died aged 81, followed dazzling wartime service as a fighter pilot and wing leader with a long and sustained peacetime career as a test pilot.Awarded a DSO and Bar and DFC and Bar, mentioned in dispatches and leading a fighter wing before he was 24, Beamont went on to lead the English Electric Canberra - the first RAF jet bomber - and English Electric Lightning flight test programmes.Subsequently he was chief test pilot of the ill-fated British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) TSR2 supersonic bomber-reconnaissance programme until the aircraft's abrupt and brutal cancellation by the ...

A LINE has been drawn under a famous episode in American presidential folklore with the death of a mild-mannered music reviewer once threatened with serious physical injury by President Harry Truman.Paul Hume, The Washington Post's music critic, wrote a gently damning review of the singing of Margaret Truman, the president's daughter, at a 1950 Washington recital."Miss Truman is a unique American phenomenon with a pleasant voice of little size and fair quality," Hume wrote of the performance."She is extremely attractive on stage, yet Miss Truman cannot sing very well. She is flat a good deal of the time. . ."Truman ...

Bo Belinsky, whose pitching prowess as a rookie with the Los Angeles Angels catapulted him to the life of a Hollywood playboy and the fleeting glitter of a 1960's celebrity, died Friday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 64.The cause was apparently a heart attack, The Associated Press reported. Belinsky had been treated for bladder cancer and vascular problems and had undergone hip-replacement surgery. He had been dependent on alcohol and drugs, but said last year that he had been sober since 1976.A one-time teenage pool hustler, Belinsky experienced a tumultuous ride; he was lionized by Walter Winchell, ...

FLIGHT LIEUTENANT WILLIAM REID, who has died aged 79, won a Victoria Cross in 1943 for his heroism on a bombing expedition to Germany.On the night of November 3 1943, Reid was serving with 61 Squadron as captain of a Lancaster bomber on the way to Dusseldorf when it was attacked by a Messerschmitt 110 nightfighter as it crossed the Dutch coast.His windscreen was shattered, the plane's gun turrets, steering mechanism and cockpit were badly damaged, and Reid himself sustained serious injuries to his head, shoulders and hands. The plane dived 200 ft before he managed to regain control.Saying nothing ...

TOMMY GOULD, who has died aged 86, won the Victoria Cross, the only Jewish recipient of the Second World War, while serving in the submarine Thrasher in February 1942.At about midday on February 16, Thrasher, on patrol off Suva Bay, on the north coast of Crete, torpedoed and sank an Axis supply ship of some 3,000 tons, escorted by five anti-submarine vessels.The escorts counter-attacked, with support from aircraft, and dropped 33 depth-charges, some of them very close indeed. Thrasher survived the attacks and, that evening after dark, surfaced to recharge batteries.In the early hours of the morning, when Thrasher altered ...

WING COMMANDER ROY ELLIOTT, who has died aged 84, was an exceptional squadron commander in Air Vice-Marshal Don Bennett's hand-picked Pathfinder Force.Mostly creamed from standard Bomber Command squadrons by Group Captain Hamish Mahaddie, an ebullient Scot whom Bennett styled his "horse thief", the Pathfinders pinpointed and illuminated targets for the main force. They were distinguished from other pilots by a much coveted gold Pathfinder winged badge worn below their RAF wings.Sometimes diving a No 627 Squadron two-seat, twin-engine de Havilland Mosquito - the versatile "wooden wonder" - as low as 50 ft to mark and attack targets, Elliott displayed, as ...

WING COMMANDER DANNY WALKER, who has died at London, Ontario, aged 83, was navigator in the Dambusters' attack on the Mohne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley.Flying Officer Walker's task on setting off in the early evening of May 16 1943 was to get his Australian pilot, Flight Lieutenant David Shannon, to the targets and back. "We were just over Holland when we got coned by the searchlights," he recalled. "They were so dazzling you couldn't see a thing. You were like a black moth caught in the light expecting the fighters to scream in any moment."Walker steered the ...

SEYMOUR REIT, the author and illustrator who has died aged 83, was the creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost.Reit began drawing for animated films in the 1930s when, having just left university, he landed a job at the Miami studios of Dave and Max Fleischer, perhaps best known for their Betty Boop cartoons. Reit was one of 500 artists employed in the making of Gulliver's Travels (1939), and also worked in his spare time on short films featuring Popeye and Betty Boop.This brought him useful additional income, but he soon realised that there were far fewer talented storytellers at the ...

THE 11th EARL OF EGMONT, who has died in Alberta aged 87, became one of the Peerage's most romantic figures at the age of 15 when he reluctantly moved from a two-room prairie shack to Avon Castle, Hampshire, on his father's inheritance of the earldom.Members of a junior branch of the Perceval family which had emigrated to Iowa and then Alberta in the late 19th century, the boy and his widowed father "bached" together on a 600-acre ranch at Priddis, near Calgary.Wearing chaps, boots and stetsons, they contentedly built up a herd of cattle, chopped their own wood and cooked ...

ALBERT ALEXANDRE, who has died aged 100, was the last veteran of the First World War resident at the Royal Hospital Chelsea; in 1999 France made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.Alexandre enlisted at 15 in October 1917 and was just 16 when his regiment, the Guernsey Light Infantry, which had recently lost 700 men, moved back into the line at Passchendaele.There Alexandre was thrown into the bloodiest of fighting, worse, he said, than anything he had been led to expect by his more experienced comrades.Even the elements seemed to conspire with the horrors of war to make ...

COLIN MacIVOR, who has died aged 72, began his career as a Jesuit before moving into an unequivocally secular existence; his sometimes rackety and occasionally disastrous progress, however, never destroyed his true vocation, which was for setting the table on a roar.Brilliant, witty and outrageous, MacIvor exemplified panache while retaining the gifts of sympathy and generosity. Yet he had his demons to fight.An outwardly brazen Englishry covered complex feelings about class, which made him distinctly unreliable when discussing his past, and which meant that he drew his most profound satisfactions from foreign sources.He was also plagued by bouts of manic ...

BARTLEY GORMAN, who has died aged 57, was the self-styled "King of the Gypsies", celebrated in the shadowy world of illegal fighting as the Undefeated Bareknuckle Champion of Great Britain and Ireland.Gorman was, he estimated, "the most dangerous unarmed man in the world". He would never fight a "normal man", because "I am liable to kill him with one punch".He was born in 1944 at Nottingham, the son of a Welsh father and Irish mother, and the fifth in a line of Bartley Gormans. "Bartley Gorman the third was the champion of North and South Wales. Bartley Gorman the fourth ...