Really Interesting People from the UK
RALPH EHRMANN, aged 97
From being an RAF navigator, he rose to be Chairman of the toy company Airfix, using his experience to design models – and transformed the British toy market.
GRAHAM NEWBOULD, aged 66
The Queen’s personal chef who divulged her food likes and dislikes, and who also worked for Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
DAVID KIRKE, aged 78
He reacted to tragedy with great risk. He invented bungee jumping and microlighting and competed in extreme and dangerous sports, always facing great dangers.
PATRICIA RUANNE, aged 77
She had exceptional dancing skills and became a Prima Ballerina at a young age. She worked closely with Nureyev and became a celebrated ballet teacher.
Really Interesting People from Europe
JANINE DE GREEF, aged 95
Along with all of her family she was a key member of the Comet Line, getting Allied airmen out of Belgium at great risk to herself.
DAVID DUSHMAN, aged 98
Fencing played a big part in his life. He was the man who liberated Auschwitz – and went on to coach the USSR fencing team in the Olympics.
BEPPE PIRODDI, aged 82
An Italian playboy in the 1960s he was part of a group known as The Four Musketeers. He had affairs with rich women and had celebrity friends, as long as connections with royals and the Mafia.
LILY SAFRA, aged 87
Born in South America, she married four times, becoming one of the world’s richest women and a major philantropist. But two of her husbands died in mysterious circumstances.
Really Interesting People from the World
LANCE MACKEY, aged 52
Known as The People’s Champion, he was a ‘musher’, who completed in, and won, dog sled races in Alaska. However, his career was blighted by controversy.
DON WALSH, aged 92
One of the world’s great explorers, he was the first person to visit the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific – but remained relatively unknown.
ESTHER COOPER JACKSON, aged 105
A Civil Rights campaigner, she was active in many areas, including defending those wrongly accused of crimes. She gave a voice to the oppressed in her magazine.
JO-CARROLL DENNISON, aged 97
Brought up in a travelling show she went on to be a beauty queen winning Miss America. A wartime pin-up and actress she started to fight for women’s rights.
