A Life Well Lived: Remembering those we lost in 2021
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2021
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Times has an august history of recording the lives of significant people and has been doing so since the 19th century in the obituaries pages. Here we remember some of the people who may not be household names but are no less fascinating.
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Guests:
- Tim Bullamore, Obituaries writer, The Times
- Martin Fletcher, Obituaries writer, The Times
- Tove McArthur
- Sharon Weston Broome, Mayor-President of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
- Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Professor of African American Studies, Loyola University, Maryland.
- Francesco Redi, Tiramisu World Cup
- Elif Shafak, author
- Dame Maureen Lipman, actress, writer & comedian
Hosts:
- Anna Temkin, Deputy Obituaries Editor, The Times
- Mariella Frostrup, Times Radio
Remembering the lives of:
- Dr Evelyn McNicol, obstetrician and explorer.
- Martha White, civil rights activist
- Ado Campeol, restrateur
- Nawal El Saadawi, writer and activist
- Perry Pontac, playwright
- Helen McCrory, actress
Clips:
Sleepless In Seattle, TriStar Pictures, written and directed by Nora Ephron.
Fatal Loins, BBC Radio 4, written by Perry Pontac.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Writers like me want to believe that our wisdom is what people buy newspapers for. |
| 0:07.0 | In fact, many pay their money just for the crossword, and others for arguably the best |
| 0:13.0 | written and most extraordinary section of the paper, obits, the obituries. |
| 0:20.2 | The Times has been in the obits business is the 19th century. |
| 0:24.1 | Laurence Nightingale had a Times obituary, and so many years later did Nelson Mandela. |
| 0:30.1 | 2021 saw pieces written about the lives of Prince Philip, Shirley Williams, Stephen |
| 0:37.2 | Sondheim, Mary Wilson, and Conan Powell, but there have also been obituries of people |
| 0:42.8 | who may not be household names, but whose stories are no less extraordinary. |
| 0:48.8 | Her legacy eventually will be elevated in the annals of American history. |
| 0:55.6 | There I am, big pentameter, seem to be the first language of Perry Bondi. |
| 1:00.2 | If she fell into the Glasgow Clyde, she'd resurface with a family in each pocket. |
| 1:04.9 | Talking about, you know, Ms. Luis Reviso is like talking about Maradona and Naples. |
| 1:10.2 | You can joke about that. |
| 1:12.1 | Giving voice to people whose voices we never hear was so primary urge. |
| 1:19.4 | Today on Stories of Our Times, a life well-lived deputy obituries editor Anna Tempkin |
| 1:25.4 | introduces us to some people she thinks we should know. |
| 1:33.8 | When I tell people what I do for a living, often they say, |
| 1:38.0 | Anna isn't that quite gloomy. In fact, I tell them it's entirely the opposite. |
| 1:45.0 | Obituries are celebrations of life. They're short, elegantly written biographies, |
| 1:51.3 | which, through anecdotes and illuminating personal details, |
| 1:55.4 | should leave the reader with a genuine sense of what that person was like, |
| 2:00.2 | what made them tick, what drove them, what were their habits, hobbies and quirks. |
... |
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