What a Times obituary can teach us about life (2024)

Just as not all people are born equal, so they do not die equal. As Calpurnia reminds us in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar : “When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”

While wealth and the possession of luxuries are not key criteria for an obituary in The Times, they are a regular feature on our pages. As an obituaries writer I’ve learnt much about my subjects from their attitude to wealth. Whether it made them happy or was a burden. Whether those for whom wealth was newfound behaved differently from those who inherited it. And how they used – or abused – their riches. We all worry about money to a greater or lesser extent, so perhaps the answer to the question of whether it made them happy can be found in antiquity: Solon, the 6th-century BC Athenian statesman, is attributed with the saying: “In truth, I count no man happy until his death.”

An obituary is not the final verdict on a life; we leave that to St Peter at the pearly gates. Yet an obituary – of which about 1,000 are published annually in The Times – is the first posthumous attempt to consider what contribution a person has made during his or her lifetime.

Often the things that make obituaries rich are not material goods, but tales of those who were unconventional or took risks. For instance, self-made businesspeople such as Sir Arnold Clark, who started with £160 and became the first billionaire used-car dealer to appear on The Sunday Times Rich List. As his obituary (published on April 11, 2017) noted, he said: “I will buy whatever I want to buy, and I will buy the best” – which included marble floors in his home in Spain as well as several boats, including the racing yacht Drum, bought in 1987 from the pop star Simon Le Bon.

Property often appears among the luxuries that the deceased have enjoyed. As well as inheriting wealth, land and royal connections, the Duke of Roxburghe (August 30, 2019) owned the 200-room Floors Castle in the Scottish Borders (sadly, not for long; he died aged 64, while his father had died at 61). Bruno Schroder (February 22, 2019), of the banking family, had a castle on the Isle of Islay. Karl Lagerfeld (February 20, 2019), the fashion designer, had “at least five” homes. And Professor Ian Craft (June 8, 2019), the controversial IVF pioneer, his obituary tells us, “bought a dilapidated house in Devon, which came with the working farm he had craved as a young man”.

Jewellery and art tend to be mentioned only in the context of a heist or if they were part of a substantial collection. The Duke of Roxburghe fell victim when thieves “used a dinghy to cross the Tweed and drilled through a door before making off with Fabergé eggs valued at £100,000”. Professor Lord Bhattacharyya (March 4, 2019), a business academic who lived in a magnificent Victorian mansion, had a parlour with “20 clocks that chimed every half hour. Elsewhere the house was stuffed with Victorian and Indian art . . . His favourite gadget was a £15,000 home cinema system.”

Playthings – particularly if they weren’t an obvious match with someone’s public persona – feature more regularly in obituaries. For instance, Gordon Pollock, QC (May 8, 2019), a Falstaffian lawyer, had become renowned for “riding a huge red BMW motorbike”. Cylla, Lady Dugdale (January 21, 2019), who was David Cameron’s aunt, acquired a private pilot licence and plane so that she “could beat those traffic jams”.

Many, though, preferred a simple life. Arthur Ryan (July 10, 2019), the founder of Primark, enjoyed watching sport, especially football, wore slippers in the office and said he liked to eat “sliced ham and bread and butter”. Sir Ken Morrison (February 2, 2017), who built the supermarket chain, was famously parsimonious. “If you don’t need it, don’t spend it,” was his view.

Our pages carry many obituaries of those who have made their names in the arts – in part because visual artists, actors and rock stars can often be illustrated with outstanding pictures. While many achieved fame, and perhaps a whole page in the newspaper, they could not buy reputation. Although the entertainer Freddie Starr (May 11, 2019), for instance, “lived in large houses, lighting his cigarettes with £20 notes and buying a succession of Rolls-Royces and racehorses”, he was best known for not eating a hamster.

A very few give their riches away, such as Sister Wendy Beckett (December 27, 2019), whose income from her TV work and books “went directly to the sisters, who used it to fix the leaking roof” of the convent. Others want to ensure their story is passed on; for example, Toby Jessel (December 5, 2018), a former Tory MP, who, facing heart surgery, invited an obituary writer to lunch at the Garrick Club.

Perhaps the greatest luxury that money cannot buy, though, is love. Robert Bradford (July 15, 2019) and his wife, the novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford, had riches beyond the dreams of most of us, yet what mattered most was their mutual devotion. “Her presence is so important to me, I don’t think I’d do so good, or feel so well, without her,” Bradford said of his wife. “She’s everything. And I pray to God I die first so I don’t have to go on living without her.”

For those not blessed with luxuries, or who have blown their wealth enjoying life, there is always the possibility for a bit of make-believe. Richard Booth (August 23, 2019), a bookseller and the self-declared “king of Hay-on-Wye”, had a crown created from tin foil and an orb and sceptre made from a discarded toilet cistern. He knew what he liked – and took great pleasure in them while he could.