In the late 1980s the Daily Telegraph transformed the traditionally dry and stolid world of obituaries, ushering in a new way of writing about the dead that was vivid, gently subversive and richly comic. Telegraph obituaries became a byword for entertaining journalism, celebrated for their deadpan tone and sympathetic eye for human quirks and eccentricities.
Here is a gallery of the most entertaining of these eccentric lives from the recent past, most of them never before published in book form. They amply demonstrate that in an age of committees and bureaucracy and increasing pressure to conform, eccentrics of all kinds have continued to thrive. From the oddball to the prophet, they have ploughed their own furrow. These miniature biographies are charming, funny, oft en moving, but always compulsively readable.
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Andrew M. Brown was born in 1969 and has been obituaries editor at the Daily Telegraph for nine years. He wrote his first obituary, a stock or advance obit of the actor James Garner, more than 20 years ago. He previously edited the opinion pages ofthe Sunday Telegraph and has contributed to The Spectator, The Oldie and the Catholic Herald among many other publications. He is married with three children and lives in south London.
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“The paper’s cheeky, truth-dealing obits have inspired a cult readership. The books that collect them … are oddly uplifting, better than edibles, to tuck into before bed. The latest Telegraph collection is titled “Eccentric Lives.” It’s a book about oddballs and joy-hogs and the especially drunken and/or irascible, and it may be the best yet.” The New York Times
