by Sue Corbett
She received many honours in her life. She was appointed CBE in 1976 and advanced to DBE in 1987. She was six times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and won it in 1978 with The Sea, the Sea.
In 1956 Iris Murdoch married John Bayley, later Warton Professor of English Literature and a fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford. He looked out of his college window one day, he said, and seeing her cycling by knew at once that he would marry her. Together they lived a life of cosy intellectual companionship, haphazard domestic arrangements and bizarre culinary creations. It was reported by friends who had them to stay early in their married life that when taking up a pot of tea in the morning, they found Iris sitting bolt up in bed with her nose in Wittgenstein, while her husband lounged at her side perusing Woman’s Own. They were to remain constant companions throughout their long marriage, and together were familiar figures in the literary world, both dressed from their favourite “good as new” shop. John Bayley cared for her with devotion and tenderness throughout her final years when Alzheimer’s disease took an increasingly tenacious grip upon her once fine mind. He charted the cruel progress of the illness in his poignant and unflinchingly honest memoir Iris, published last year.
He survives her. There were no children.
Dame Iris Murdoch, DBE, novelist and philosopher, was born on July 15, 1919. She died on February 8, 1999, aged 79
DUSTY SPRINGFIELD
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POP SINGER BLESSED WITH A HUSKY EROTIC VOICE WHO BECAME A GAY AND LESBIAN ICON
MARCH 4, 1999
Dusty Springfield was acknowledged on both sides of the Atlantic as the finest female soul singer Britain has produced. Her croakily erotic voice — which belied the shy, vulnerable convent girl who produced it — created a string of hit records during the Sixties’ beat boom. After three successful years teamed with her songwriter brother Tom as two-thirds of the folk-music based group, the Springfields, she made her 1963 solo debut with “I Only Want to Be With You”, sung with jaunty fervour. It was an immediate hit, remaining in the charts for 18 weeks, and it has endured as a pop classic.
More hits followed throughout the Sixties, including “Stay Awhile”, “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself”, “Losing You”, “In the Middle of Nowhere”, and the poignant “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me”, which in March 1966 took her to No 1. The following year she was back in the Top Ten, at No 4 with “I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten”.
Dusty Springfield took her enjoyment of her fame right down to the wire in those heady years. As part of the swinging London club scene, she found she had become a model for teenage girls, who slavishly copied her startling beehive blonde hairstyle and dark “panda” eye makeup.
On concert tours she played to packed houses, and adoring fans writhed and screamed when the myopic star appeared hesitantly from backstage to belt out her first number. The Sixties were her apogee. She consistently won the top female singer award, outshining such contemporaries as Lulu, Cilla Black and Sandie Shaw.
But the golden years did not last. Her career, spanning more than four decades, was a turbulent one even by the standards of the pop world. Persistent tabloid interest in her sexual proclivities — largely engendered by her confessing that she was as much attracted to women as to men — drove her to live in Los Angeles for much of the Seventies. There, although she became something of an icon for gays and lesbians, her talent was largely neglected. “I became bored with being a pop singer,” she confessed. A rare success was “Son of a Preacher Man”, taken as a single from an otherwise stonily received LP, Dusty in Memphis.
Despondent, and fighting what was to be a lifelong weight problem, she followed a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse. Known for her impulsive candour during interviews, she once said: “I lost nearly all the Seventies in a haze of booze and pills. I couldn’t have one or two drinks. I had to get loaded. Vodka and the pills helped ease my shyness. Then I got into cocaine and in seven months I was a brain-scrambled wreck.”
But she went on to overcome her addictions and then revived her career, courtesy of the Pet Shop Boys, and enjoyed an inspired period in the late Eighties and Nineties. The group began by inviting her to sing on what was to become their worldwide triumph, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”, and went on to write much of her album Reputation.
In 1994, however, she discovered that she had breast cancer. She was forced to cancel her singing dates and undergo surgery and months of chemo and radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London. After the initial shock, her attitude was typically wry: “Why me? Why not?” she said, and added: “I never expected to live this long anyway, so it’s uncharted territory.”
Dusty Springfield was born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien in Hampstead, of Irish parents. Her father was a tax consultant and her mother, as the singer once described her, was “a free spirit who married to escape spinsterhood; they both bitterly regretted it.” Staunch Catholics, they stayed together for the children but quarrelled endlessly. Dusty recalled a troubled childhood. “I was so unhappy as a kid.” She would challenge her hot-tempered father when he hit her, and she became “very jealous of my brother Dion. He was older and the blue-eyed boy.”
She grew up at first in Buckinghamshire and then in Ealing, where she went to a convent school. On leaving she took a part-time job in Bentalls department store, meanwhile joining a syrupy all-female vocal trio, the Lana Sisters, which sang mostly at air bases. In 1960 she and Dion, who was already writing songs, adopted the stage names Dusty and Tom Springfield, and launched themselves as the Springfields, a folk-singing duo. Dusty supplied the guitar accompaniment.
Success was elusive to begin with, but when they were joined by Tim Feild they quickly became one of the country’s top vocal groups. They had two Top Five singles with “Island of Dreams” (1962) and “Say I Won’t be There” (1963), by which time Feild had been replaced by Mike Hurst. The Springfields had a million-seller in America with the country standard “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” (although it did nothing in Britain) before splitting up in 1963.
Inspired by the ear-thumping “wall of sound” style pioneered by the American producer Phil Spector, Dusty Springfield recorded her first solo hit, “I Only Want to Be With You”, which got to No 4. It was the first record ever played on a new television programme called Top of the Pops.
By 1967 she was in full flow, with a string of hits including “Middle of Nowhere”, “Some of Your Lovin’”, and “Look of Love”, which featured in the James Bond film Casino Royale. She was also a regular on the TV pop music show Ready, Steady, Go. At the time she used her celebrity to campaign on behalf of the then little-known American soul and Motown artists. Her eclectic taste in music tended to set her apart from most of her peers in this country. She became popular in America, where she made numerous appearances.
In all she had 16 hits almost successively during the 1960s before her career began to falter. She exiled herself to California for 15 years, living in a two-bedroom house with up to a dozen cats for company. She made sporadic visits to Britain, each time attempting a come-back. But renewed success eluded her until 1987, at the start of her collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys (the singer Neil Tennant and keyboard player Chris Lowe). Not only did she have a share in the duo’s No 2 hit “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”, but she featured on the soundtrack of the film Scandal, about the Profumo affair, singing their theme tune “Nothing Has Been Proved”.
She was still bedevilled by her past, however. In 1991 she sued and won undisclosed damages in the High Court as the result of a sketch on a television show in which the comedian portrayed her performing while drunk.
After extensive chemotherapy she was in 1995 pronounced to be clear of cancer. But the disease returned in the following year.
She was appointed OBE in the last New Year’s Honours.
Dusty Springfield, OBE, pop and soul singer, was born on April 16, 1939. She died of cancer on March 2, 1999, age
d 59
BARONESS RYDER OF WARSAW
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FORMER SOE WORKER WHOSE EXPERIENCES IN POSTWAR EUROPE LED HER TO FOUND AN INTERNATIONAL CHARITY FOR THE SICK AND DISABLED
NOVEMBER 3, 2000
It was the Second World War that confirmed Sue Ryder’s desire to help relieve suffering, the task which shaped her life and gave rise to the international charity named after her. The Sue Ryder Foundation for the sick and disabled of all age groups grew from the misery she witnessed in postwar Europe, particularly in Poland, where its work came to be focused. It grew to run more than 80 homes worldwide and 500 charity shops.
From 1959 she worked in harness with her famous husband, the former bomber pilot Leonard Cheshire, who had founded the Cheshire Homes for the Disabled. Together they made a formidable team, tireless in works of mercy.
During her Yorkshire childhood she had cared for people who lived in slums, but the war, which brought her childhood to an end, showed her more extreme cases of human suffering, and shaped her resolve to relieve suffering wherever she found it. Sue Ryder grew up in a pleasant home near Leeds, but she was within walking distance of terrible slums. Her mother and her friends worked hard to raise funds to buy more taps, lavatories and even communal baths for the slums. From a young age, Sue Ryder helped her mother. The family gave up their second house in Yorkshire because of the Depression, and lived permanently at Great Thurlow in Suffolk.
When the war broke out she was a 16-year-old schoolgirl at Benenden. She joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), and was posted to the Special Operations Executive, the unit responsible for coordinating resistance to the Third Reich in countries occupied by Nazi Germany. She joined the Polish section of the SOE, and later said that the optimism and sense of sacrifice which the Polish agents, or “Bods”, as they were known, made an indelible impression on her. She began to think of ways in which their faith, courage and humour might be perpetuated. In 1942 she volunteered to do relief work in Poland and elsewhere, when she could be released from SOE duties.
After the end of the war she went to France, where she worked in a relief unit. She was told to collect a lorry in London and load it with stoves and drugs for the relief of tuberculosis and typhus. The lorry broke down in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, but she got it into the gutter with the help of passers-by. She then cleaned the carburettor and the petrol pump, replaced the sparking plugs and was off. She later drove a mobile clinic with the women of the Croix Rouge; nine of them slept and ate in a stable.
In Germany she drew attention to the fate of former prisoners-of-war who had been held in German prisons, sometimes for stealing food in places where there were severe food shortages. She found work for many former prisoners, tried to make contact with their families, and continued to work for them for the next thirty years. In 1980 there were just a handful remaining, out of the original thousands. She also brought many survivors of the concentration camps to a holiday home in England. It was for her work with prisoners in Germany that she was appointed OBE in 1957 at the age of 34.
She wanted to found a living memorial to those who had died in the two world wars in defence of humane values. The work in hospitals and prisons grew so quickly that by the time she returned to England in the winter of 1951-52 she had decided to form a small committee and register the living memorial with the Church Commissioners.
In 1953 the Sue Ryder Foundation was established with the help of a small legacy, credit from the bank and plenty of optimism. She bought her mother’s house in Suffolk to serve as the foundation’s headquarters and the first Sue Ryder Home. It was to look after physically disabled individuals, and cared for many people who would otherwise have occupied hospital beds. A friend provided quantities of secondhand furniture, and nurses, carpenters and secretaries flocked to help.
Sue Ryder might have missed meeting the war hero and commander of the famous 617 Squadron, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, out of diffidence. He had been awarded the VC during the war for his service in Bomber Command, and had later found a different kind of fame by establishing the Cheshire Homes for the physically handicapped. When she arrived one day at his home for the disabled at Ampthill, she came to the wrong gate. It was locked, and in a moment of uncharacteristic shyness she was tempted to go home. But she persevered, they met, and they were married four years later, in 1959.
It was to be a marriage of true minds and common purposes. They made it clear to their fellow workers that their intention as a team was to strengthen their work for those who depended on them. The birth of a son and a daughter were hardly allowed to interrupt their work. The two foundations remained largely separate, although they did found a joint centre at Dehra Dun, in India. They named it after Raphael, the archangel of healing, and among others it cared for lepers, many of whom were taught to use their hands and learnt a trade.
In her autobiography Ryder wrote, “I feel I belong to Poland”, and the country eventually had 28 Sue Ryder Homes. Most of the material came from Britain, but the Polish authorities ran the homes, and provided the staff. For many years she drove thousands of miles to Poland in lorries named after such prophets as Daniel and Ezekiel. Poland lacked the most basic medical provisions, and they were filled with everything from condensed milk to pillows. On one occasion a few orthopaedic pillows aroused the suspicions of an East German border guard; on another, the guards wasted so much time that an impatient colleague of Ryder’s blessed them with water from the shrine at Lourdes. The guardsmen were amazed, but the team was allowed to proceed without further ado.
She also established 22 homes in Yugoslavia, where one helper said that the conditions reminded her of descriptions of the Crimean War. Some of the homes were destroyed in the Bosnian War.
By the 1980s the six Sue Ryder Homes for continuing care were nursing almost 900 people in Britain. Fundraising was always a priority: methods included a wellington-boot throwing competition and the “fastest bedmaker in town” competition. One Sue Ryder Home was at Leckhampton Court, near Cheltenham. The medieval house had been abandoned for nearly ten years when she found it; she converted its ruins into a working home within 18 months. There was a desperate need for after-care facilities to work in conjunction with the radiotherapy centre at Cheltenham General Hospital, and the home relieved the pressure on beds at the hospital, reducing the waiting list.
Sue Ryder expected her colleagues to show as much dedication as she could display herself. Since she had a formidable appetite for work, and typically got up shortly before 4.30am, she was a difficult woman to work with; but it may be that a congenial woman would not have achieved so much. She also found it difficult to delegate, wanting to stay in control, but her personal concern for everyone in her care was genuine and a strength. She was a devout Roman Catholic.
Sue Ryder was appointed CMG in 1976, and created a life peer as Baroness Ryder of Warsaw in 1979. Poland was so important to her that she insisted, unconventionally, on associating the peerage with Warsaw (usually only service chiefs were allowed to associate a peerage with a foreign place). She also received a host of Polish and Yugoslavian honours. Her autobiography was published in two volumes, And the Morrow is Theirs (1975) and Child of My Love (1986).
In recent months Ryder had become estranged from the organisation, which changed its name to Sue Ryder Care. Before entering hospital in September she had founded a new organisation, the Bouverie Foundation, to continue charitable work, particularly that overseas.
Leonard Cheshire, who had by then been made a life peer, died in 1992; she is survived by her son and daughter.
Baroness Ryder of Warsaw, CMG, OBE, founder of Sue Ryder Homes, was born on July 3, 1923. She died on November 2, 2000, aged 77
Editor’s note: The Sue Ryder organisation, and other authorities, give Baroness Ryder’s year of birth as 1924.
ELIZABETH ANSCOMBE
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BOLD AND ORIGINAL THINKER WHOSE IMPACT ON THE INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL COMMUNITY WAS DEEP AND ENDUR
ING
JANUARY 8, 2001
Elizabeth Anscombe was a giant in the world of 20th-century Anglo-American philosophy. An internationally known author and speaker, she worked on the history of philosophy, logic, philosophy of mind and human action, philosophy of causation, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, and moral philosophy. She retired as an active teacher some years ago, but her impact on the philosophical community endures to this day. As a contributor to a Festschrift in her honour once put it: “Philosophy as she does it is fresh; her arguments take unexpected turns and make unexpected connections, and show always how much there is that had not been seen before.”
Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe was born in 1919, the youngest child of Alan Wells Anscombe, a schoolmaster at Dulwich College, and his wife, Gertrude Elizabeth. She had two older twin brothers. Educated at Sydenham School and St Hugh’s College, Oxford (of which she later became an honorary Fellow), she was a research student at Newnham College, Cambridge, and a Research Fellow, and then Fellow, at Somerville College, Oxford (in which her portrait now hangs). She became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1967 and was a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1970 Anscombe was appointed to the chair of philosophy at Cambridge University. Ludwig Wittgenstein (arguably the greatest philosopher of the 20th century) had held the same position before her, and her name will always be associated with his. Her teacher and friend, he nominated Anscombe as one of his literary executors (together with Rush Rhees and G. H. von Wright).
