Obituaries

I first heard of Raymond Carr, who wrote for this magazine for more than 40 years, when I was in Italy in the army at the end of the second world war, and I had a letter from my sister in London saying that she had met the most marvellous man who was not only very funny but immensely clever, and I must meet him when I got back. By the time I did, Raymond had moved from being a wartime schoolmaster at Wellington College to a being a resident fellow of All Souls, Oxford. He was, yes, both immensely funny and rather grand. Raymond Carr had been educated at

Bored with the election? Switch over to the Greek debt drama. In this week’s cliffhanger, silver-tongued finance minister Yanis Varoufakis visited IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Sunday, promised to meet his country’s obligations ‘ad infinitum’, and was expected to meet a €450 million repayment to the IMF on Thursday. But more troublesome members of the ruling Syriza party denounced the IMF and Brussels for treating Greece as ‘a colony’, threatening a snap election ‘if creditors insist on an inflexible line’, and warning that public-sector salaries and social security payments must rank ahead of debt as cash runs out. Which it will before August. Greece’s tax collections are so feeble, its

The FTSE100 index has at last breached 7,000, surpassing its peak of 30 December 1999 and provoking moderate celebration among investors who have enjoyed such poor returns all these years. A thousand pounds invested in FTSE100 stocks on Millennium Eve, with dividends reinvested, was worth £1,670 by last month, an annual return of 3.4 per cent compared to inflation over the period of around 2.9 per cent. The same sum invested in a London house would have been worth £3,200, nearly twice the return on shares if we ignore running costs and the leverage effect of mortgage borrowing; invested on the rollercoaster of gold bullion, it would have been worth

With Candida, you learned to expect the unexpected. She said she might make the charity sale at my house on Thursday, but not to rely on her. I didn’t. But on Friday, a bright red pick-up truck turned into the yard and out got Candida with a bagful of contributions. But she also brought a birthday present of a beautiful Alice Temperley skirt for my younger daughter. The red pick-up was a present for Candida’s own birthday, thrilling her as much as any red bike for a six-year-old. ‘I’m an old hippy,’ she once said. Perhaps. She was certainly a child of the Sixties, when half the aristocracy’s offspring were

Mr S was saddened to hear of the untimely death of Mark Shand, the Duchess of Cornwall’s brother. He was a kind and witty man: a natural bon viveur. Parties for his charity, Elephant Family, which campaigned to protect the habitats of the endangered Asian elephant, were always splendid affairs. Shand’s vivacity and generosity came to the fore and partygoers gave generously. Mr S remembers one bash at Lakshmi Mittal’s gaffe. Lalit Modi, Vijay Mallya, Michiel Mol, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, Joanna Lumley, Sarah Ferguson and countless faceless financiers were dolling out cash like nobody’s business. London society has lost one of its most dashing players. And the Indian elephant

I could start by remarking that we should not speak ill of the dead, quoting the pertinent Latin phrase: de mortuis nil nisi bonum (‘of the dead, only good’). But this would be to miss a key qualification because the whole quote (from Diogenes Laertius, circa ad 300) adds ‘dicendum est’: ‘is to be said’. And that puts a different complexion on things. Commentators have preferred to describe the advice as an established social convention rather than necessarily their own opinion. Indeed it is often used as a sly way of indicating (without stating) the speaker’s disapproval of the deceased. But if the phrase has been thrown once at my

Thousands of social media users have taken to their keyboards to express shock and surprise at the death of Shirley Temple. Almost everyone, it seems, thought that the film star and diplomat had passed away many years ago: Shirley Temple – dead at 85. I had no idea she was still alive. — Gvac (@WMGvac) February 11, 2014 So shocked to read that Shirley Temple, the Academy award winning actress and former child star, was still alive. — John Johnsonson (@JohnJohnsonson) February 11, 2014   Shirley Temple was alive? — Mr Eugenides (@Mr_Eugenides) February 11, 2014 BREAKING NEWS: Shirley Temple was still alive until this week. — Hugh Armitage (@hugharmitage)

On Friday a Taliban suicide bomber detonated in downtown Kabul in the doorway of a Lebanese restaurant which was popular with foreigners. Two accomplices then went into the restaurant and gunned down the people inside. The victims included a Labour party candidate for the forthcoming European elections, the IMF’s country director and a young Afghan couple. They also included a friend and colleague, Alexandros Petersen. Educated in London, Alex worked for some years at the Henry Jackson Society as well as at the Atlantic Council and the Woodrow Wilson Center. He had recently joined the political science faculty of the American University in Afghanistan. Alex was a deeply impressive individual

Terribly saddened to hear of the death of Simon Hoggart, a lovely writer and to my mind the finest and funniest purveyor of the House of Commons sketch that we have seen. I saw Simon, surprisingly, in concert in Canterbury, around about this time last year, delighting the audience with anecdotes from his many years watching politicians talk rubbish. We went for a curry afterwards and he seemed on good form, if frail from the punishing bouts of chemotherapy. He was a hugely gifted writer; certainly, the only writer in the English language who could tempt me to read anything about wine, other than the words ‘half price £4.99’. His

The publisher Leo Cooper has died aged 79. Cooper, who was the husband of novelist Jilly Cooper, had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for many years. His widow told me last year that the Spectator brought her husband ‘a great amount of pleasure’ in his later years. He remained a subscriber long after his illness was diagnosed. ‘He would read it cover to cover every week,’ she said. Mr S would like to pass on the Spectator’s condolences.

I’ve been on Jura on a Wedding Planning Immersion Course* these past few days so, apart from noting that the Pope is retiring (upon which I have no opinion), I’ve not been paying little attention to the outside world. Some things have crept through, however. Among them this splendid obituary in today’s Telegraph. The intro is arresting and in the best tradition of Telegraph obituaries: Jungleyes Love, who has died aged 56, was an Old Harrovian hippie who traded in runic jewellery, dinosaur eggs and fossilised animal excrement, which he sold from his shop on the tourist trail to Kew Gardens in south-west London. Well, you want to know more,