Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Most weekdays we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Today though we'll be looking back at some notable lives, the inspired and inspiring

figures who died this year.

It's very difficult to characterize this year over last year.

The film is the economist's obituaries editor.

This year hasn't really had any pattern or theme to it and every so often as usually happens

a great figure dies and then much of the time you find you're looking round for people

who are not as well known.

Perhaps the most significant figure to die this year at least from a British perspective

was Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of the Queen.

The man she called her strength and stay, he was a man of few words and even fewer interviews

but his influence was widely felt, not least on his own family.

My father, I suppose the last 70 years, has given the most remarkable devoted service

to the Queen, to my family and to the country and also to the whole of the Commonwealth.

One particularly interesting pairing of the year among the great leaders who disappeared

was Kenneth Coender and FW Declurk.

Kenneth Coender was the founding president of Zambia who built up his country from a rather

struggling and discontented colonial power.

Too pretty successful and fairly united state and who became the father of Africa in some

ways he became a great force for peace on the continent.

On the other side if you like at least for most of his life was FW Declurk who was the

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