Posthumous Parallel and Parallax: the obituary revival on three continents

Abstract

The newspapers of Britain, the United States, and Australia in recent years have increased significantly the column space devoted to obituaries. In so doing, they have reinvented one of the earliest expressions of popular journalism. The obituary art in its first incarnation was practised by the newsbook compilers of 17th-century England, notably during the Restoration. It flowered in the 18th century, in the first daily newspapers and in The Gentleman's Magazine; it was exported to the colonial newspapers of America and Australia; it grew luxuriant, and sometimes ornate, in the 19th century; it became unfashionable and fell into widespread neglect in the 20th. Then, with the appointment of reformist editors and, particularly in Britain, the publication of bigger newspapers by an industry no longer subjected to labour restraint, the obituary experienced its own restoration. Though the momentum of renewed practice has been of mutual rapidity on three continents, there are some significant variations in its application. The American product generally favours a style faithful to news-writing principles so far as timing and content are concerned and is frequently expansive when relating the details of surviving family and funeral arrangements. In Britain, the emphasis is more on creative composition and a recitation of anecdotes, with less of a sense of urgency about contemporaneous publication and a consequent accent on character sketch. Newspapers in Australia, while adopting the obituary with apparent fervour, engage often in informal expression and unrestrained sentiment, largely because of their reliance on reader contributions. This article examines issues of origin, definition, authorship, and editorial practice in journalism's dying art.

Keywords:

• Obituary
• Newsbook
• Attribution
• Anonymous Author
• Character Appraisal
• Cause of Death

Towards the First Judgment of History

John Aubrey, peripatetic antiquarian and biographer of the 17th century, suffered a severe reverse in 1657: “Novemb. 27, obiit domina [trans. she died, (my) lady] Katherina Ryves, with whom I was to marry; to my great losse” (1949, p. 24). Union with Miss Ryves, and her dowry of £2,000, had promised him some relief from the “chargeable and taedious lawe-suite about the entaile” (Aubrey, 1949, p. 24) of the country property he had inherited. By 1670, when Aubrey turned 43, he had lost everything: “All my businesses and affaires ran kim kam; nothing took effect” (Aubrey, 1949, p. 24).

He wandered the roads of Restoration England on horseback, travelling from friend to friend in town and country, and rewarding their hospitality with his “most ingeniose conversation” (Strachey, 1948, p. 12). According to Lytton Strachey, as Aubrey rode and observed, he

was in the habit of jotting down on scraps of paper every piece of information he could acquire concerning both his own contemporaries and the English worthies of previous generations. He was accurate, he had an unfailing eye for what was interesting, and he possessed—it was almost inevitable in those days—a natural gift of style. (Strachey, 1948, p. 12)

Unwittingly, Aubrey was making another contribution to cultural practice, too, through his compact biographies and character sketches, published long posthumously as Brief Lives. They inspired another Englishman, 300 years later, to redefine the nature of the newspaper obituary.

Obituary: the word and the practice

The obituary's journey to its modern realization has, much like Aubrey's enforced way of life, been one of persistent transition. The search for a definition, therefore, assumes a certain pattern of change in its own right, driven by shifts in public protocol and publication style. At its core, though, two facets endure: the word's derivation from the Latin verb obire [“to go to, to go to meet, to go against, to die”] (Cassell's Latin Dictionary, 1969, p. 401) and the practice's allegiance to biographical form. James Fergusson, obituaries editor of the Independent, calls it “the first stab at biography … a first, brisk judgment in the heat of news” (Fergusson, 2000, p. 148). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory agrees, and adds a defining point of separation from what it calls “the standard news story about death”:

The obituary offers an appraisal of a life in the form of a brief biography—published in a newspaper, magazine or journal. It is important to note the appraisal factor, for it is this element which distinguishes an obituary from a standard news story about death. While the intent of the latter is to supply an account of a deceased person's life, often with information also on the circumstances of death, the obituary provides an assessment of its subject's character, achievements, and effect on society. This is frequently demonstrated through the use of anecdote. (Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, 2004)

There is reciprocity in the obituarial–biographical nexus too. In their prefatory note, the editors of the Dictionary of National Biography 1971–1980 (1986, p. vii) acknowledge a “great debt of gratitude … to the editor of obituaries in the Times [London], the most important material on which to base our selection”.

As this article will demonstrate, a strain of practice has now emerged which supplies vigorous appraisal of subject and an accent on a life lived instead of a death died. This recasting of the art has helped to create a clearer separation in considering the obituary against other death literature mechanisms. The modern obituary has proved itself better suited than the elegy to the public arena, sloughed off the conventions of hagiography and panegyric, and adopted a less sentimental voice than that of the eulogy. It is more comprehensive in content than either the death notice or the epitaph, less concerned with the circumstances of death than the news story, and more urgent in manifestation than the biography. There is, in short, nothing fanciful about endowing it with legitimacy as the first verdict of history.

Obituary: its flowering and apogee

William Saroyan, in his memoir Obituaries, has pointed astutely to the frisson of Schadenfreude which enlivens one's reading of the newly dead:

Do we mock the dead by staying alive, by reading their names in lists, by remembering them in the world, by speculating about those we never knew? Do we perhaps take pleasure from our own survival, and even from their sad or joyous failure to do so? Bet your life we do. (Saroyan, 1979, p. 318)

That sensation has been experienced since the 17th century, with the appearance of the first newsbooks. In 1625, readers of the Continuation of our Weekly Newes (a translation of a Dutch original, published in London) learnt of the death of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange:

The Prince of Orange, of famous memory, surrendered his spirit to God Almighty in the Hage [sic] … the 23 day of this month [April] … after hee had long been sicke, having left behind him the fame of a wise and valliant Prince, that had commanded in a popular state with great care and descretion [sic] for many yeares together. (Continuation of our Weekly Newes, 1625)

The report proceeded to offer further character appraisal. This feature, along with the recording of the fact and the date of death, has allowed the publisher to be recognized as, most probably, the earliest known English practitioner of the obituary art. Precise identification on this point remains, unfortunately, elusive; the title page refers to the publisher only as Mercurius Britannicus. The American historian Willard G. Bleyer (1973, p. 8) has found that this is “possibly Thomas Archer”, a prominent London printer of the time. By the Restoration, with the appointment by Charles II of Roger L'Estrange as both official journalist and national censor, the practice was more confidently established. When L'Estrange's newsbooks, the Intelligencer and the Newes, appeared in 1663 they took the obituary to the coffee houses of London. Even in death, however, an allegiance to the monarchist cause was sensible; posthumous recognition was accorded only to those who had remained faithful to the king during his exile. Inclusion in the obituary columns was reserved, therefore, for such dead royalist champions as “that Eminent, Loyall and renowned Patriot, Judge [David] Jenkins” [who]

Departed this Life, at his House in Cowbridge, the 81. Year of his Age, and in perfect Sence and Memory. He dyed, as he lived, preaching with his last Breath to his Relations, and those who were about him, Loyalty to his Majesty. (Newes, 1663, p. 128)

In similar vein, the Earl of Glencairn, who as Lord High Chancellor of Scotland had performed “many signal Services … in that high Station, wherein his Majesty most deservedly placed him since his happy Restauration”, achieved a front-page obituary (Newes, 1664, p. 369). He had died “of a Feavour in the 49th year of his Age, Beloved of his Prince, and Bewayled of all Ranks of his Majestyes Subjects” (Newes, 1664, p. 370).

Figure 1. Early obituary. The year is 1664, the dateline “Edinburgh, May 31”: Roger L'Estrange's Newes printed one of the first recognizable obituaries. Its subject was the Earl of Glencairn, a loyal monarchist, who had “dyed the 30th of the Instant of a Feavour in the 49th year of his Age” (Newes, 9 June 1664).

By the turn of the century, however, and the introit to the Age of Enlightenment, coffee house society was served a more palatable read; the emphasis now was on the authoritative recitation of fact rather than circumstantial dogma. The Daily Journal (1721–37) was a leader in the new realism, publishing obituaries that offered a rich measure of biographical detail and an understated objectivity in tone. A prime example of this marked shift in style is found in the 600 words which the Daily Journal allotted to the death, and the life, of the Duke of Marlborough:

London, June 18 [1722]

On Saturday morning about four died John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, at the Lodge near Windsor, aged 72. He was born at Ash in the County of Devon. He came first to Court by Favour of the Duke of York, and inclining to a Martial Life he went to Tangier, and in 1673 to France with the Duke of Monmouth …

In 1704 he routed the French and Bavarian Forces at Schellenbergh, and afterwards defeated them at Hockstet, was made Prince of the Empire, and on his return had the Manor of Woodstock settled on him and his heirs. (Daily Journal, 18 June 1722)

James Fergusson, whose Independent was at the forefront of the 1980s obituary revival in British journalism, has recognized a contribution of similar magnitude, made 200 years earlier, by John Nichols and the Gentleman's Magazine. Nichols, says Fergusson, “established a standard of necrology for modern times” (Fergusson, 2000, p. 149). Nichols inherited the magazine's commitment to death reporting from its founder, Edward Cave, whose first issue in January 1731 recorded the demise of 55 citizens. Their number included William Taverner [“son of Mr Jer. Taverner, face-painter, remarkably honest in his Business”], Will Whorwood [“Alphabet keeper to the Foreign Post Office”], Robert Bristow, aged 105 [“lost his Hearing but had his Sight and other Senses to the last”], Mr Trunket [“a Perfumer … well known at Newmarket”], and Mr Williams [“a celebrated Tragedian, belonging to the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane”] (Gentleman's Magazine, 1731, pp. 31–2).

That editorial emphasis blossomed under Nichols's direction. By August 1780 he had started a section entitled “Obituary of considerable persons” (Gentleman's Magazine, 1780, p. 394) and by the following April had extended that heading to “Obituary of considerable persons with biographical anecdotes” (Gentleman's Magazine 1781, p. 194).

By this time, the obituary had been adopted too by the American colonial newspapers. John Campbell, the postmaster of Boston, launched on 24 April 1704 his Boston News-Letter. The first edition contained a death notice (of a clergyman, the Reverend Mr Lockyer), followed shortly afterwards by a June 1704 edition with an account decidedly obituarial in style:

Medford, May 30—Sabbath day last about noon, after Forenoon's Exercise, Mrs Jane Treat, Grand Daughter to Deputy Governeur Treat of Connecticut, Sitting in her Chair … with the Bible in her hand as she was Reading, which was her delight, was struck Dead by a terrible flash of lightning … She was a Person of real Piety, and a Pattern of Patience, Modesty, and Sobriety. (Boston News-Letter, 5 June 1704)

A study of obituary practice, over the centuries and across three continents, has demonstrated its capacity to reflect prevailing mores (Starck, 2003). An early example of this is found in the Virginia Gazette of 1775, in which obituary style was characterized by biographical content spiced with republican sentiment. Accordingly, the death of attorney-general Peyton Randolph inspired expressions of patriotism rather than religiosity:

When the measures of the British ministry compelled the American colonies to unite their councils in General Congress, he was … unanimously elected their president. While he was attending a third time in that great council, a sudden stroke of the palsy deprived America of a firm patriot, his country of a wise and faithful senator, his acquaintance of a valuable friend, his family of a most affectionate husband and kindest master, upon the 22nd day of October, in his 54th year of his age. (Virginia Gazette, 10 November 1775)

New South Wales, the first of the Australian colonies, encountered an obituary in the second edition of its official newspaper, the Sydney Gazette, published on 12 March 1803. The subject was Samuel McDonald, a sergeant of the 93rd Regiment known as “Big Sam” who had died, aged 40, of “water on the chest” (Sydney Gazette, 12 March 1803, p. 4). He was “six feet ten inches in height, four feet round the chest … always disliked being stared at” and had repeatedly refused to make celebrity appearances despite “several considerable offers”, breaking that resolve only once when, by royal command, he played “the appropriate character of Hercules in Cymon and Iphigenia” with London's Drury Lane theatre company (Sydney Gazette, 1803, p. 4). Although the Gazette was largely intended as a medium for proclamations and notices, it also included news items—often lifted without acknowledgment from the London newspapers. That was plainly the source of the Big Sam piece, for he was said to have died “on the 6th instant” (Sydney Gazette, 1803, p. 4). Given the time required to sail to the Australian colony, this would have been a British reference, included in the Sydney account as a result of inadequate editing. His death, therefore, had probably occurred late in 1802.

The Gazette was edited and printed by George Howe, “under the censorship of the secretary to the governor, who examined all proofs” (Ferguson, 1963, p. viii). Howe, who had been sentenced to transportation for life for robbing a mercer's shop, reached Sydney in 1800, obtained the post of government printer in 1802, and—after enduring three years of considerable interference from Governor King in editing the paper—received a full pardon in 1806.1 He published Australia's first home-grown obituary in the 56th edition, on 25 March 1804. It noted the death, and the achievements, of the colony's building superintendent, James Bloodworth: “the first house in this part of the Southern hemisphere was by him erected … To lament his loss he has left a Widow and five children, the youngest an infant now only one week old” (Sydney Gazette, 1804, p. 4).

There is abundant evidence, therefore, that the early newspapers of Britain, and of its American and Australian colonies, displayed an immediate recognition of reader interest in necrology. As government control of these journals slackened, the pioneer publishers gained more confidence as well as an increase in freedom. They were afforded the opportunity of printing an appraisal of a life lived, and therefore—by evolving practice—shaped the definition of obituary. The pattern of development was noticeably similar in each of the locations discussed. The writing was at first often of a pious kind, then showed a certain obsession for the circumstances of death (frequently in graphic detail), and finally grew confident enough to engage in authoritative biographical portrait enlivened by anecdote. As the influence of Victorian literary expression grew, so too did the propensity for an orotund flourish within obituaries.

The tendency to graphic reporting, notably practised when the death itself was of a violent type, is found in Western Australia's Perth Gazette obituary of the Earl of Munster, described as the “eldest son of his late majesty William the IV, by the accomplished actress Mrs Jordan” (Perth Gazette, 1842, p. 3). In a column-and-a-half of dense type, the newspaper recorded his military service, his marriage to a daughter of the Earl of Egremont, appointment to the Privy Council, and—with typically explicit Victorian particulars—his suicide:

The melancholy event took place … at No.13 Belgrave Street, Belgrave Square, his town residence, when Earl Munster put a period to his existence by shooting himself through the head with a pistol … The face and head were severely and extensively wounded, and the right hand was wounded and covered with blood … [H]e had been particularly agitated when he heard of the recent disastrous news from Central Asia, and had been very much excited at the report that Lady M'Naughten and the other ladies had fallen into the hands of the Affghan [sic] insurgents. (Perth Gazette, 1842, p. 3)

The Evangelical fervour of the age is also reflected in the obituary pages, which often indulged the ars bene moriendi tradition [the art of dying well]. So it was that, following the death of Archbishop Archibald Tait (Archbishop of Canterbury 1868–82), London's Morning Post devoted four columns to a tale of exemplary surrender of the spirit:

On the Friday, when he was supposed to be dying, he asked what the day of the month was and, being told, expressed himself certain he should die on the anniversary he had always kept of Mrs Tait's death, and spoke of the joyful meeting with his deceased wife. (Morning Post, 1882, p. 5)

A Daily Telegraph obituarist, 10 years earlier, was similarly inspired by Evangelicalism in sanitizing the deathbed moments of John Maguire, four times Mayor of Cork: “Fortified by the rites of that Church of which he was so eloquent and earnest a defender … his last hours were without pain, and his death, in truth, a Christian euthanasy” (Daily Telegraph, 1872, p. 3). Mourning at large had been advocated, however, by the Times at the death of Albert, Prince Consort, in 1861:

The nation has just sustained the greatest loss that could possibly have fallen upon it … this man, the very centre of our social system, the pillar of our State, is suddenly snatched from us, without even warning sufficient to prepare us for a blow so abrupt and so terrible … In the Prince, notwithstanding his German education, we have had as true an Englishman as the most patriotic native of these islands. (Times, 16 December 1861, p. 8)

Obituaries published by the major newspapers of Victorian Britain were, in the main, written about princes and politicians, landowners and clubmen, eminent churchmen and military officers, scientists and inventors, explorers and adventurers, and editors who themselves had written majestic editorials. The mood was one of empire, masculinity and omnipotence. The subsequent decline of the obituary in the 20th century was matched precisely by the questioning and undermining of that hubristic state.

Obituary: a casualty of war and peace

The event in journalism history which drives this paper is the late 20th-century revival of the newspaper obituary. By the outbreak of World War I, journalism's dying art was flourishing in newspapers of quality. It is critical now, therefore, to demonstrate that somewhere between that state and the modern revival there occurred also an age of marked decline. The forces of many circumstances conspired to bring this about, beginning with wartime newsprint rationing. In Edwardian England, the Manchester Guardian had displayed a capacity for incisive posthumous assessment; the Daily Telegraph rivalled the Times in mannered and leisured obituary. As was the case with all British newspapers of the time, such practices were soon to be restrained by two persistent factors: shortage of newsprint and zealous censorship.

By 1916, the Guardian and the Telegraph were printing about two-thirds the number of pages which had typified their pre-war practice. Space on the surviving pages had to be devoted to news from the battlefields (albeit censored), lengthy political matter, casualty lists, and tributes to those killed on active service. In the post-war years, the commitment of both Guardian and Telegraph to obituary publication was gone. A study of the files indicates just an occasional half-column of what is known in the American trade as the “boilerplate” obituary: name, age, address, and the briefest of career recitation. There was neither room nor inclination to offer anecdote and character sketch.

In the aftermath of war, newspapers changed. Instead of returning to the old pattern of ponderous parliamentary reports and long editorials, they conducted competitions with “tea sets, washing machines, encyclopedias and silk stockings” as prizes (Jones, 1992, p. 48), increased their photographic content dramatically, published home improvement and fashion advice, and contributed generally to an age in which the leisurely journalism of Victorian and Edwardian Britain was “replaced by sport, crime and foreign news” (Jones, 1992, p. 49). The Morning Post had died in the 1930s. Of the other British papers specializing in obituaries, only the Times displayed an enduring interest. The obituary, a casualty of war, found little prospect elsewhere of recovery in peace.

The outbreak of World War II led to a further tactical withdrawal of obituary publication, with paper rationing again reducing newspaper size significantly. In the post-war years, with newsprint rationing still in force until 1958, the Guardian returned to its format of the 1930s: concise, quietly reverential life summaries in an occasional half-column on the general news pages. Opportunities for engaging story-telling were sadly overlooked. Viscount Elibank had served as a parliamentary private secretary, held a 300-year-old Scottish barony, and campaigned throughout his life for pictorial postage stamps to “stimulate the country's tourist trade” (Guardian, 1962, p. 7). His obituary compressed all this into five paragraphs. Ten years later, the neglect accorded Sir Rodger Winn was even worse. Despite being “crippled by boyhood polio”, he had served with “almost legendary brilliance” in naval intelligence during World War II, and was later appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal (Guardian, 1972, p. 6). This life of achievement was given 14 lines.

The post-World War II Daily Telegraph also treated the obituary art with disdain. The pattern that emerged in the 1950s, to be replicated for more than 30 years, was that of a daily main obituary of seven or eight short paragraphs (about four to six column inches) followed by a collection of one-paragraph death reports. It was colourless stuff, as these examples from the 1950s to the 1980s indicate:

Herbert Smyth. In a London hospital, on Saturday, aged 66. The eldest of four successful racehorse-trainer brothers. Trained more than 500 winners at his Epsom stables under Jockey Club and National Hunt Rules from 1923. Retired in 1950. (Daily Telegraph, 21 January 1952, p. 3)

Constant Huntington. In London, aged 86. Head of Putnam and Co., publishers; born in Massachusetts, entered Putnam's in New York, 1902, coming to London, 1905; acquired controlling interest of English company 1933, and was also a director of New York firm; was credited with discovering writers such as Erich Maria Remarque and Isaak Dinesen. (Daily Telegraph, 7 December 1962, p. 16)

James Broderick. At New Haven, Connecticut, aged 55. American film and television actor, best known for role of worried father in television series “Family” (1977). Films included “Alice's Restaurant”, “Dog Day Afternoon” and “The Shadowbox”. Toured with Helen Hayes in “The Glass Menagerie”. (Daily Telegraph, 3 November 1982, p. 16)

A publisher, the second subject in that list, brings to the world of books Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, yet is given less than five lines of formulaic type. He was a victim of a prevailing belief, held by the Telegraph's owners of the time, that “readers were only interested in live people” (Twiston Davies, 1996, p. xi). Readers surely deserved an opportunity to decide for themselves; they would have to wait until 1986 for the appointments, under Conrad Black's ownership, of Max Hastings as Telegraph editor and Hugh Massingberd as the reviving force of its obituaries.

A study of newspapers published in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and Atlanta (Starck, 2004) has found that American journalism dispensed erratic treatment to the obituary between the 1920s and the 1990s. It fared best, though with some occasional reverses, at the New York Times. The most significant event, in its realization at the paper with “All the News That's Fit to Print”, was the 1964–76 appointment of Alden Whitman as chief obituary writer. His biographical studies, drawn often from interviews with his subjects, demonstrated the possibilities of obituaries when given room to breathe. The New York Times subsequently displayed ambivalence towards obituary publication, before resuming its stature by the mid-1990s as a leader in the genre.

There was, at best, spasmodic concentration on obituaries at both the Constitution (now the Journal-Constitution) in Atlanta and the Los Angeles Times. Signs of withdrawal became noticeable as early as 1912 in Atlanta's morning newspaper, and by the 1940s a similar lack of commitment was apparent in Los Angeles.

At the Washington Post, the standard obituary was regarded as unimportant until, on the admission of a senior staff member, its inadequate treatment had become something of an embarrassment.2 An editorial overhaul then put in place a more assured delivery from the 1980s. Richard Pearson, obituaries editor at the Post for 15 years until his enforced retirement (through illness) in 2003, has reflected on his newspaper's erstwhile neglect of the art:

People think of us as a big paper, a national paper, but foremost we're a local paper. With Watergate … we gave the appearance of being a star publication, but obituaries [in the 1970s] were lagging because of the way they were handled. Copy aides would take telephone numbers of people calling in, they would drop them in a box and reporters would pick one out and try to call. So there was no real standard. A lot of the editors treated them as just something to fill up the space when we had room. For major figures, we just ran wires [obituaries from agencies].3

There was a marked cooling of interest in Australia too; this was particularly the case from the 1940s, when war again imposed newsprint rationing. Long before that, though, the obituary had become—except in the instance of the celebrated dead—formulaic in content, predictable in delivery, and unrevealing as a first draft of social history. In an extreme demonstration of this protracted lacuna, the Canberra Times in 1928 ignored altogether the death of a former prime minister, Andrew Fisher, and four years later could find room for only five paragraphs on Albert Jacka, who had won the Victoria Cross and two Military Crosses in World War I.

In an essay on Australia's “culture of death”, Pat Jalland (2001) has argued that the Great War “marked a turning-point in the history of death, grief and mourning in Australia … [and] a pre-existing decline in Christian mourning rituals”. It is possible that this behavioural shift was also a restraining circumstance upon obituary publication. Considered in sum, the forces of circumstance within Australia were sufficient to reduce the art to a moribund state. Revival, however, was imminent—on three continents.

British Journalism's Agents of Change

A confluence of events saw the art of obituary revived in Britain during the 1980s. The Daily Telegraph and the Independent appointed innovative, reformist editors; the Times led the Fleet Street diaspora, breaking print union restraints and allowing newspapers to grow in size and scope; the Guardian underwent an overhaul of design and content. As The Encyclopedia of the British Press observed (Griffiths, 1992), it became fashionable suddenly to complain about the bulk of the papers, much as occurs each Sunday across the Atlantic when readers are confronted by the grey newsprint mass calling itself the New York Times. Obituary, in its incarnation as instant biography, suited the column space which, increasingly, was made available. The Times [London] eventually devoted the better part of two pages to it.

That revival, though, was more than an exercise in broad acreage. New styles of writing were cultivated too. Obituarists, pricked perhaps by the explicit judgments of an editor briefly appointed to the Times obituaries desk, adopted a more candid form of posthumous appraisal. Humour was introduced also, notably by the Telegraph in writing about eccentrics, of which there appear to be many in Britain. Photography, for the first time, was treated as an integral element of the obituary page, led by the example of the Independent; author credits were included by both the Independent and the Guardian.

The timing was all. In the summer of 1986, the obituary art in Britain was still—save at the Times—a sad and ill-favoured thing. Then came the seminal weeks of autumn, and three agents of change: Hugh Massingberd, James Fergusson, and John Grigg. Massingberd changed the scope and the perception of obituary, in Britain and elsewhere; Fergusson was the usher of a radically amended form of presentation on the page. First, though, Grigg must be despatched. He had inherited the title Lord Altrincham (which he subsequently renounced) in 1955, winning a reputation as a polemicist two years later with his criticism of the monarchy in the magazine which he edited, National and English Review. Come 1986, Grigg was acting obituaries editor at the Times in a brief but influential stewardship: “John Grigg … produced some pieces which were not so much ‘warts and all’ as ‘warts only’ obituaries; many readers found Grigg's work tricky to reconcile with Bacon's belief that death ‘openeth the gate to good fame’” (Chalmers, 1989, p. 29).

The dancer, choreographer and actor Sir Robert Helpmann had the fingers of his reputation jammed in that gate when the character sketch which Grigg wrote, or allowed to be written,4 contained this reference to Helpmann's sexual proclivity:

His appearance was strange, haunting and rather frightening. There were, moreover, streaks in his character that made his impact upon a company dangerous as well as stimulating. A homosexual of the proselytising kind, he could turn young men on the borderline his way. (Times, 29 September 1986, p. 14)

Anthony Howard, a former deputy editor of the Observer and obituaries editor of the Times from 1993 to 1999, has identified the date of the Helpmann obituary, 29 September 1986, as the day that brought an end to the convention of de mortuis nil nisi bonum [of the dead speak only good]. On the broader question of obituary revival, though, Howard sees the reform of the Telegraph and the arrival of the Independent as being of more significance:

I think what really changed things was that the Times lost its monopoly. Two things came together [in 1986]. The Telegraph really decided to go for it, and the other thing was that the Independent came on the scene and decided to make a big go of obituaries … they also had access to a picture library.5

It is for his pictorial treatment that James Fergusson, obituaries editor at the Independent from the first edition on 7 October 1986, is generally noted as an agent of change.6 Prior to this, the occasional single-column head-and-shoulders portrait was the limit of obituary illustration. Fergusson, formerly an antiquarian bookseller, offers a self-deprecating reason for his dramatic use of photography. He maintains that, when dummy editions of the new paper were being produced, “we didn't have enough words—so the pictures were used bigger”.7 The outcome, fortuitous or otherwise, clearly has had its imitators; obituaries published by several of the newspapers considered for this paper (notably those in Sydney and Los Angeles, as well as in London) have adopted a bold photographic approach.

Figure 2. An agent of change. The legacy of James Fergusson, obituaries editor of the Independent since its inception in 1986: author credits, emphatic pictorial content, and a capsule of life history in a “go-last”. These features have contributed significantly to the British obituary transformation (Independent, 15 October 2002).

As Max Hastings (2002, p. 8) has recalled, however, in a memoir on the Daily Telegraph's metamorphosis under his own stewardship, it was Hugh Massingberd who changed the obituaries pages “from a musty backwater of the paper into the most brilliant feature of its kind in the business”. Educated at Harrow and briefly an articled clerk in a solicitor's office, Massingberd had written and edited works of genealogical reference, studies of royalty and social history, and a series of illustrated volumes on palaces, grand hotels and country houses. He had also long nurtured an ambition to transform the obituary. His muse, as identified at the outset of this paper, was John Aubrey. Massingberd found himself inspired in particular by Roy Dotrice's stage performance as the itinerant diarist and biographer:

Picking up a work of reference, he [Dotrice] read out an ineffably dull biographical entry about a barrister. Recorder of this, Bencher of that, and so on. He then snapped shut the volume with a “Tchah”, or it may have been a “Pshaw”, and pronounced: “He got more by his prick than his practice.” It was the blinding light for Massingberd. There and then in the Criterion Theatre, I determined to dedicate myself to the chronicling of what people were really like through anecdote, description and character sketch rather than merely trot out the bald curriculum vitae. (Massingberd, 1996, p. vi)

On his first day at the Telegraph, 1 July 1986, the draft death announcements included that of Tom Blofeld, father of the BBC cricket commentator and a minor celebrity in his own right as the Norfolk squire whose surname had been appropriated for the recurrent villain of James Bond books. Told to “bash it out and then try to sell it to the chief sub”, the new obituaries editor had to explain that his inability to type made that impossible (Massingberd, 2001a, p. 265). Augustus Tilley, the former obituaries editor who was seeing out his last months in co-existence with his successor, did the typing for him.

By September of that year, it became no longer necessary to sell ideas to the chief sub-editor; Massingberd forged an agreement with Hastings that obituaries would have roped-off columns of their own. Those columns were subsequently enlivened, often, by the obituaries of such career eccentrics as the 4th Earl Russell, elder son of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. He had told the House of Lords that the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States (at that time, Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter) were “really the same person” and that the state should give each girl in Britain a house of her own when she turned 12 “so that marriage would be abolished and the girl could have as many husbands as she liked” (Massingberd, 1996, p. 48). Away from the Lords, the 4th Earl Russell had spent his time “writing and crocheting”, once showing a visitor a pair of trousers hanging on the wall by a nail: “I crocheted these out of string … It took me a long while because I didn't have a pattern. I had to keep trying them on” (Massingberd, 1996, p. 49).

The coincidence was heady. The Daily Telegraph by September 1986 had a reformist editor and significantly increased space; the Times, in the Helpmann obituary on the 29th of that month, extended the bounds of explicit posthumous comment; the Independent, in early October, introduced an innovative photographic treatment. In British journalism, the revival had begun.

Resurrection in the United States and Australia

The 1980s and 1990s brought renewed favour to the American obituary too. Newspapers, searching for ways of maintaining sales in the face of competition from broadcast and online information sources, found that the obituary offered an eminently readable alternative. Editors interviewed by the author of this paper maintain that the reinvigoration of their pages occurred quite independently of the British experience. Myrna Oliver, a writer and editor of obituaries at the Los Angeles Times since 1990, is adamant on the point: “I don't buy that ‘Brits-invented-the-modern-obituary-in-the-late-1980s’ theory. When the British obits became popular, we all read some for entertainment. But I don't think their style influenced what we were already doing and expanding upon.”8

An identical view has been expressed by Alana Baranick, obituaries editor of the Plain Dealer, in Cleveland, Ohio. She was appointed to the job in 1992 “because obituaries were expanding”, and

We were striving for better written and more interesting stories that offered readers more substantiated facts, and presented more clearly, than what they were seeing on television. I wasn't even aware of anything special about British obituaries until my son came home from London with some obituary pages in the mid-1990s [after the British revival]. By that time, we were writing less formulaic obituaries at the Plain Dealer.9

Long before Cleveland's awakening and, so it would seem, even preceding Massingberd et al. by as much as four years, the Philadelphia Daily News achieved a reputation for its informal, innovative practice. Two American publications, American Journalism Review (Bittner, 1994) and Philadelphia (Duffy, 1988), both record 1982 as the year in which Jim Nicholson was appointed as obituaries writer for the Daily News. It was apparently a perspicacious choice; the Society of American Newspaper Editors in 1987 recognized with a distinguished writing award his performance as an obituarist. Editor & Publisher said at the time that Nicholson and the Daily News had

saluted the very common man or woman, ranging from a vice-squad cop who dropped off bags of groceries to families of those he had arrested; a scrubwoman who spent many of her off-hours cleaning her church; to a retired maintenance man “whose faith and joyful persona were a magnet to people who wanted his prayers and counsel, and who was a leader in his church and the Boy Scouts”. (Storm, 1987)

There is at times, as that quoted passage would suggest, a strand of candied sentiment in rendition of the United States obituary outside the major papers of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and Washington. It is perhaps because of this trait that the more astringent flavour of the revived British model, particularly in its portrait of eccentric characters, has clearly intrigued commentators across the Atlantic. The Wall Street Journal (Pope, 1996), New Yorker (Lane, 1998), and Smithsonian magazine (Conniff, 2003) have printed major reports on the phenomenon.

Distinct regional characteristics are apparent in United States obituary columns. When John Gotti, of Mafia notoriety, died in prison, his New York Times obituary (Raab, 2002) captured the remorseless nature of his calling, describing him as “a narcissistic tyrant with a furious temper who betrayed allies and who ordered the slayings of … loyalists he suspected of being informers or who [sic] he thought had not shown him proper respect”. In Georgia, the voice of the South was heard, albeit on a sinister note, when one Atlanta family, in providing information for an obituary, told the Journal-Constitution that “Daddy died after a fall”.10 “Later,” said the obituaries editor, Kay Powell, “we found out that Daddy fell because his daughter murdered him.”

The newspapers of Australia, with their omnipresent wire service links from London, were—on their own admission—influenced by the British revival. The force of that influence was clearly persuasive: within a 10-year period, eight Australian dailies launched an obituaries page. The fashion was started, in July 1993, by Alan Oakley, at the time recently arrived from England to edit Melbourne's Herald Sun. Oakley had worked in his home country for the Daily Telegraph, and was an admirer of its obituary prowess: “I've always viewed the Telegraph as the benchmark in obituary writing. Every trainee journalist the world over should be made to read them.”11

Under his direction, the Herald Sun took two significant editorial decisions in an attempt to challenge the traditional primacy of its Melbourne rival, the Age, in the “A/B” demographic groups (the better educated and more affluent). It expanded its business coverage and introduced an obituaries page. Five months later, the national daily, the Australian, carried a front-page announcement of a new feature entitled “Time & Tide”, containing “Obituaries, reviews and life's revealing moments” (Australian, 6 December 1993, p. 1). Once more, the British influence was profound. Michael Visontay, who edited “Time & Tide” for its first two years, has recalled this exchange with Paul Kelly, his editor-in-chief, which led to his appointment:

Kelly: “What do you think the British newspapers do well?”

Visontay: “Sport, the arts, features?”

Kelly: “Obituaries.”

“Jesus!” thought Visontay. “That's the end of my career.”12

Visontay's chagrin, on being appointed obituaries editor, was understandable. As Britain's Sunday Correspondent put it when discussing the revival, the commonly held view until the 1980s was that obituary writing represented “the journalistic equivalent of being sent to Siberia” (Chalmers, 1989, p. 20). The editor-in-chief argued, however, that the development of an authoritative obituaries page would strengthen the reputation of the Australian as a newspaper of record. The “Siberia” fear which Visontay had imagined on appointment was immediately repudiated by the nature of his initial challenge, having to secure at short notice an obituary of a corrupt law officer for the debut of “Time & Tide” on Monday, 6 December 1993. Murray Farquhar had died on the Friday; after serving as Sydney's chief magistrate for eight years, he had been jailed for four years on a charge of perverting the course of justice. The evidence of the obituary's newfound favour at Australia's national broadsheet therefore began with this:

Murray Frederick Farquhar, World War II veteran, solicitor, Chief Stipendiary Magistrate, epitomised the unfortunate nexus between Sydney's notorious underworld and its so-called upper world. His death on Friday, of a heart attack, aged 75, has laid to rest the most public symbol of that particular malaise in Sydney society over recent decades which saw criminal figures mix openly with public officials. (Australian, 6 December 1993, p. 13)

Immediately below was an obituary of a quite different character. Rodney Shearman, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Sydney, was accorded in print the accolades of a grateful community. It originated as a contributed piece from Ian Fraser, a colleague at the university. Further material of this type was solicited by the Australian, on the page, in these words: “If you know someone whose contribution to society should be honoured with an appreciation, call Time and Tide [sic] on 228 2555” (Australian, 6 December 1993, p. 13, author's emphasis). The pattern was set, accordingly, for a mix of hard-nosed, professional appraisal and soft farewell laced with eulogy; it is an uneasy ménage which has beset the nation's obituary pages ever since. Its odd perpetuation is one of the questions examined in the final section of this paper.

Matters for Judgment

Execution

As the obituary pages of Britain, the United States, and Australia can now comfortably demonstrate survival, as well as revival, it is appropriate to reflect on questions of execution and ethical consideration. In terms of style and appearance on the page, some immediate contrasts are apparent between the British model, as practised by the four leading obituary pages (in the Times, Telegraph, Independent, and Guardian), and American practice.13 Points of difference are detected in:

• The use of the “go-last” (a summary of life events at the end of each obituary), a device introduced by the Independent and subsequently adopted by the Times and the Guardian. None of the major American papers employ it, preferring instead (along with Britain's Telegraph) to offer a more traditional form of summary lead. Proponents of the “go-last” argue that it enables the writer to offer a creative construction at the head of the obituary and, within the narrative, provides some escape from the dictates of chronology.

• Attribution in the opening paragraphs; this practice is often pursued by both the New York Times and Associated Press, giving rise to such complex opening constructions as “Berry Berenson Perkins, a photographer and eclectic fashion plate of the 1970s before she settled into marriage with the actor Anthony Perkins, was killed on Tuesday, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, which was the first jetliner to strike the World Trade Center, a spokeswoman for the family said” (Horyn, 2001). The British newspapers avoid this approach.

• Signed and unsigned obituaries; the American preference (shared by the Independent and the Guardian) is to publish by-lines. The Times and the Telegraph prefer anonymity of authorship, communicating “a sense of magisterial objectivity while still embodying a distinctive editorial voice” (Economist, 1994).

• Details of surviving family; while the American papers are expansive, listing partners and children by name (and location too), British style is restricted to a brief mention of partners and offspring by sex and by number. In the United States, also, it is standard practice at most newspapers to end the obituary with an announcement of funeral arrangements. This characteristic serves as a reminder that publications such as the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post maintain a role as a local newspaper in a way in which the London dailies do not.

• Contemporaneousness; at American newspapers, alacrity in publication is pursued. Reviewing British and United States obituary characteristics, the Guardian has observed: “American obituary writing … remains primarily a news item rather than an aspect of belles lettres. Lapses of days or even weeks between a death and an obituary are routine in the UK, while, in the US, timeliness is all-important” (Showalter, 2000).

Because of those American news imperatives and because of the British inclination towards belles letters, there is a demonstrable contrast in the style of writing. Microsoft Corporation's online magazine, Slate, has endorsed that opinion, and in so doing offers a useful summary of comparison:

[T]he New York Times and most American newspapers treat obituaries primarily as news stories. The [New York] Times always includes the cause of death near the top of the article and almost always includes the age of the deceased in the headline. The British broadsheet obituary more resembles an essay tacked onto a tombstone. The headline is usually just the person's name, with a one-line description, and then his birth and death dates near the end. The [inclusion of] cause of death is optional. (Ledbetter, 2002)

That point of difference, on why and how the obituary subject died, justifies consideration in its own right.

Cause: obsession, disregard, and sentiment

The American obituary's concern for identifying the cause of death and the British model's marked lack of interest are apparent from two studies. Ball and Jonnes (2000) analysed 9325 New York Times obituaries of the 1990s and found that cause of death was identified in 6234 instances (67 per cent). This determination to define the cause is pursued vigorously by the newspaper's obituaries editor, Charles Strum, even in instances of suicide. He has argued that, as an obituary is a news story, the essentials of news writing would be violated by any engagement with mild euphemism:

In any news story, if you say “He had tried to take his own life”, what the hell does that mean? Did he try to shoot himself, stab himself, jump off a roof, stick his mouth over a tailpipe? … Either tell me what's going on or avoid it altogether … It's not about covering up or making nice. All we write are news stories, and if it's not that it's a tribute or a cover-up.14

A similar passion for precise information is held in Los Angeles. When the poet Charles Henri Ford died in 2002, at 94, the Los Angeles Times (2002, p. B9) attributed his death to “causes associated with aging”. While Myrna Oliver, as an obituaries editor, is perplexed at times by the relentlessness of her newspaper's policy on finding a cause, she does acknowledge the degree of reader interest: “I do think that people want to know. They judge their own health and longevity by reading obituaries”.15

Informed assertion, rather than definitive statement supported by quantifiable data, is necessary in reporting policies on cause of death within British newspaper obituaries. None of the London newspapers has been subject to research of the type conducted by Ball and Jonnes in their study of the New York Times. What can be asserted, from the available literature and from interview, is that effort is made to attribute a cause, within a specified age limit, at the Guardian and the Times. It can also be deduced that cause of death is regarded as relatively unimportant at the Telegraph and the Independent. The relative enthusiasm for this factor at the Times originates from Anthony Howard's regime as obituaries editor (1993–9):

My policy was that we gave the cause of death if someone died under the age of 70. I think you owe a duty to the reader, particularly when someone died at 42 or whatever. There's a question mark, and you have to answer that question.16

The Times, when pursuing that practice, includes the cause in the “go-last” summary. The Guardian prefers to state it in the text, again on the basis of perceived reader interest. “Anyone aged from 20 to, say, 70, the general reader would say ‘I want to know how they died’,” says Robert White, assistant obituaries editor.17 In addition, in the event of traumatic death involving a subject aged over 70, the circumstances are usually specified. James Fergusson, however, defines the cause on his Independent page only when it is an intrinsic element of the obituary narrative, as “in the case of a mountaineer falling off a cliff”; his greater concern, he says, is to publish obituaries that are “about lives, not deaths”.18

An indication of the Telegraph's disdain is found in its anthology The Very Best of The Daily Telegraph Books of Obituaries (Massingberd, 2001b). Of the 100 selected obituaries (originally published between 1987 and 1999), only nine indicate the cause of death; in six of those it is clearly stated and in the other three a cause is implied. Further, it is apparent that in each instance the information is there because of the relative youth of the subject or because it is germane to the narrative. The anthology offers a classic Telegraph voice in the obituary of Nico, a singer described as “the Dietrich of the 1960s”, who “gave up heroin for bicycling, which was to turn out the more dangerous amusement—she died when she fell off a bicycle while on holiday” (Massingberd, 2001b, p. 43–6).

The Australian position in this regard, as is the case with its obituary practice at large, remains unpredictable. This finding owes its existence to the reliance which newspapers there place on material submitted by readers. Australian obituary desks, unlike (in particular) their American counterparts, are staffed by a solitary writer-editor. Such is the case at the Sydney Morning Herald, where the obituaries editor, Suzy Baldwin, has conceded that

The amateur contribution is enormously important. It's more important than I would like it to be. At the same time, I am enormously grateful for it because … [without it] I wouldn't have a lot of local obituaries. I sometimes ask for the eulogy … nearly always, that's where the good stories are.19

Eulogies, then, can be valuable source material. Too often, however, some newspapers place a reliance on amateur contributions of questionable standard. Four selections, published in Australia between May 2002 and November 2003, illustrate the sins of loose gate-keeping and flimsy sub-editing. It should be understood that these are not instances of quoted direct speech, presented as statements of tribute. Each appeared on the page as the newspaper's own assertion:

He died following a sudden heart attack, and he will be sorely missed for his inspirational leadership. He will also be missed as a strong family man who dedicated his love to his precious wife, his children and his loving grandchildren. (Australian, 2002, p. 12)

Over the last days in particular, as friends tended to Thelma's immediate needs, there was a real feeling of lesbian community in action, all of us doing our best to support one of our lesbian sisters to die peacefully at home with her partner of 17 years … in the way she wanted. (Age [Melbourne], 2003, p. 9)

In Arnold Hunt we had far more than an academic or theologian or historian or lecturer. We had a warm-hearted human being, a beloved husband, father and grandpa. (Advertiser [Adelaide], 2003, p. 68)

Forty-five years after his marriage, it was a pleasure to see the admiration in his eyes when he gazed at his wife Gladys. (Herald Sun [Melbourne], 2002, p. 106)

That sort of composition would better be directed at the classified death notices columns; it does not warrant consideration as journalism. Nevertheless, the Australian bent for running syndicated material from the leading British and American sources does provide a more assured strand of practice too. Though the union of the two forms is at times gauche, the accumulated body of evidence points to a remarkable reinvigoration of practice in Australia's daily newspapers, as a third strand of the obituary's international resurrection.

Conclusions

The chronicling of death is an ancient and integral element of newspaper composition. It also happens to be journalism that matters, for the obituary offers both biographical information and a reflection of society's prevailing mores. Newspapers were compromised, in their ability to serve as documents of record, by its widespread neglect from the years immediately after World War I to the 1980s. Britain's subsequent resuscitation, and reshaping, of the obituary was matched by a corresponding phenomenon in the United States. The modern revival, on both sides of the Atlantic, came as American and British publishers were looking for ways of offering an intelligent, eminently readable alternative to television news. The obituary fitted that demand. In Britain, too, the mood of the moment was directed towards the production of bigger newspapers using computer-driven technology, following the defeat of anarchic forces in the print unions. The movement in the United States was led by Philadelphia's Daily News, whose obituarist, Jim Nicholson, won a Distinguished Writing Award in 1987 from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The following year, Philadelphia magazine noted: “Since then, he's been getting calls from newspaper editors around the country who are curious about his style, curious about how obituaries could win anything” (Duffy, 1988, p. 131–2). Those editors recognized the potential appeal to an ageing readership, started their own pages, and have subsequently transformed the obituary art into an instrument of such prominence in American journalism that, since 1999, an annual conference has been held solely to discuss its practice.

Through the influence of worldwide syndication, the spirit of revival reached Australia. Panorama, the literary supplement to the Canberra Times, has declared (2002, p. 8), in devoting a whole page to the topic, that a defined obituary section was “the most significant innovation in the written content of Australia's newspapers of the past ten years”. Although the Australian pages have, too often, delivered an uneven product, the momentum has been sufficient there for eight daily newspapers to establish an obituaries page within a 10-year period. Commenting on the process of revival on three continents, a former editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald has observed: “A newspaper of quality hardly seems complete these days without a regular obituary page. Somehow, in an era when we must all pretend to be young and, if possible, beautiful and immortal, obituaries have caught on.”20

Along with their emphatic presence has come a remarkable shift in the style of writing which obituaries adopt. The reverential voice and faithful recitation of curriculum vitae have been replaced by inventive phrase, shafted observation, and understated humour. Ian Board lived, and died, to be accorded that potent posthumous treatment by the Daily Telegraph:

Ian Board, who has died aged 64, was the proprietor of the Colony Room, a Soho drinking club favoured by Bohemians, artists, homosexuals and assorted loafers … Perched on a stool by the bar, clad in tasteless leisure-wear, his eyes protected by sunglasses, “Ida” (as he was known to his closest friends) would trade coarse badinage with his regulars … Board was an heroic smoker and drinker … and if his drinking destroyed his youthful good looks, it also shaped and nourished his magnificent nose. (Massingberd, 1996, p. 333–5)

Quite simply, the best obituaries of today are sublime to read. Russell Baker, in a foreword to a New York Times collection, has relished the “blessed relief they provide after the front page”, finding them to be

Oases of calm in a world gone mad. Stimulants to sweet memories of better times, to philosophical reflection, to discovery of life's astonishing richness, variety, comedy, sadness, of the diverse infinitude of human imaginations it takes to make this world. What a lovely part of the paper to linger in. (Baker, 1997, p. viii)

Notes

1. Reports differ on Howe's offence. Other sources describe it as “shoplifting”; Ferguson's account, however, contains persuasive evidence from a Birmingham newspaper which would indicate that he was sentenced to death for “robbing a mercer's shop”. Subsequent circumstances, notably those concerning the commutation, remain unclear.

2. Author interview with Richard Pearson, 6 June 2003. Pearson, obituaries editor of the Washington Post, died five months later, of pancreatic cancer. His obituary, in the Post on 13 November 2003, included the anecdote that, as a schoolboy, he had won an award for raising poultry. Pearson subsequently described this achievement as his “pulletzer prize”. All interviewees supplied written consent to the publication of their remarks.

3. Author interview with Richard Pearson, 6 June 2003.

4. Times style prohibits by-lines on its obituaries, and published references to the incident offer no enlightenment on authorship. Grigg died on 31 December 2001, before the author of this paper had started to conduct research interviews on the topic.

5. Author interview with Anthony Howard, 8 October 2002.

6. Fergusson's reputation, fuelled by popular journalism on the obituary revival, is perhaps unreasonably limited in this respect. As this paper demonstrates, he also introduced innovations in style and content.

7. Author interview with James Fergusson, 15 October 2002.

8. Author interview with Myrna Oliver, 6 June 2003.

9. Author interview with Alana Baranick, 31 May 2002.

10. Author interview with Kay Powell, 26 May 2002.

11. Author interview with Alan Oakley, 3 February 2003.

12. Author interview with Michael Visontay, 22 October 2003.

13. As the obituary pages of Australia draw heavily on syndicated material from both Britain and the United States, the position there is somewhat haphazard, frequently offering a peculiar amalgam of styles. Other aspects of Australian obituary practice are discussed towards the end of this paper.

14. Author interview with Charles Strum, 10 June 2003.

15. Author interview with Myrna Oliver, 6 June 2003.

16. Author interview with Anthony Howard, 8 October 2002.

17. Author interview with Robert White, 10 October 2002.

18. Author interview with James Fergusson, 15 October 2002.

19. Author interview with Suzy Baldwin, 10 February 2003.

20. Author interview with David Bowman, 8 February 2003.