Deaths in January - 2025

Singer Wayne Osmond died January 1 at the age of 73. He wrote Laugh Lines: 50 Years of Jokes, Stories, and Life as an Entertainer.

Novelist, academic and literary theorist David Lodge has died aged 89.

His best known novels include a trilogy featuring academics at the fictional English University of Rummidge, and the American Maurice Zapp: Small World, Changing Places and Nice Work. He also wrote several books on literary theory including The Art of Fiction, and some memoirs, including Quite a Good Time To Be Born.

>2 elkiedee: More specifically, David Lodge (1).

Writer Andrew Pyper died January 3 aged 56. Pyper's works include The demonologist, Lost girls, and The killing circle. His latest book was William (as Mason Coile), out last year.

Historian Michael Loewe died January 1 at the age of 102. His books include Problems of Han administration : ancestral rites, weights and measures, and the means of protest, Bing: From Farmer's Son to Magistrate in Han China, and Dong Zhongshu, a Confucian Heritage and the Chunqiu fanlu.

Scientology critic Mike Rinder died January 5 at the age of 69. He wrote A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology.

Singer-songwriter Peter Yarrow died January 7 aged 86. Yarrow's works include a Puff the Magic Dragon illustrated storybook, Day is done picture book, and Favorite folk songs in the The Peter Yarrow Songbook series.

I'm sorry, I can't maintain an entirely neutral tone on this one:

Jean-Marie Le Pen, a French far right politician who founded the Front National, has died aged 96. He had several convictions for his racist speeches and writings, including antisemitism, Holocaust denial, anti Roma racism. He was a French intelligence officer during the Algerian War in the 1960s and there are stories that he was involved in torture. Hostility and racism towards Muslims in France, many of them from Algeria and other former French colonies in North Africa, has been part of the political programme of the Front National, now Rally, and this has continued as JMLP's daughter Marine Le Pen has distanced the party from some of her father's other views. His published books include Mémoires (I won't be reading it or any of his other work).

Political philosopher and professor Robert Paul Wolff died January 6 aged 91. Wolff's works include In defense of anarchism, A critique of pure tolerance, and Autobiography of an ex-white man : learning a new master narrative for America.

Novelist and professor Joseph Monninger died January 1, 2025. Author of Goodbye to Clocks Ticking, Crash (Stay Alive #1), and many others.

Theologian Richard B Hays died January 3 aged 76. Hays was recently in the news for changing his mind on the morality of homosexuality, as described in his book The Widening of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (with his son Christopher B Hays). Hays's other works include The moral vision of the New Testament : community, cross, new creation : a contemporary introduction to New Testament ethics and The art of reading Scripture (edited with Ellen F Davis).

The youngest Freedom Rider, Charles Person, died January 8 aged 82. His memoir Buses are a comin' : memoir of a freedom rider was published in 2021.

Animal trainer Karen Pryor died January 4 at the age of 92. Her books include On My Mind: Reflections on Animal Behavior and Learning, Click! Tricks (Sterling Innovation Edition): 10 Fun and Easy Tricks Any Dog Can Learn, and Reaching the Animal Mind: Clicker Training and What It Teaches Us About All Animals.

Baseball great and sportscaster Bob Uecker died January 16 at the age of 90. His autobiography was called Catcher in the Wry.

Director David Lynch has died at the age of 78. His memoir was Room to Dream.

Actress Joan Plowright died January 16 at the age of 95. She wrote And That's Not All and co-wrote Olivier at work : the National years : an illustrated memoir.

Soccer star Denis Law died January 17 at the age of 84. His books include Denis Law: My Life in Football (MUFC) and The King - Denis Law - The Autobiography.

Architectural and urban historian Françoise Choay died January 8 aged 99. Choay's works include The modern city; planning in the 19th century, Le Corbusier, and L'urbanisme.

Historian and professor Shulamith Shahar died January 9 aged 96. Shahar's works include The fourth estate : a history of women in the Middle Ages, Childhood in the Middle Ages, and Growing old in the Middle Ages 'winter clothes us in shadow and pain'.

Civil rights advocate and former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards died January 20 aged 67. Her autobiography is Make trouble : standing up, speaking out, and finding the courage to lead-- my life story.

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer died January 17 aged 95. Feiffer's works include the illustrations for Norton Juster's The phantom tollbooth, the children's books Bark, George and I lost my bear, and A barrel of laughs, a vale of tears.

Poet Michael Longley died January 22 at the age of 85. His works include Ash Keys: New Selected Poems, The Slain Birds, The Candlelight Master, and A stream's tattle : new poems.

Theologian and priest Don Cupitt died January 18 aged 90. Cupitt's works include The sea of faith (from/with the TV series), Taking leave of God, and After God : the future of religion.

Business management scholar Ikujiro Nonaka died January 25 aged 89. Nonaka's works include The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation with Hirotaka Takeuchi, and Enabling knowledge creation : how to unlock the mystery of tacit knowledge and release the power of innovation with Georg von Krogh and Kazuo Ichijo.

Writer and editor Al Sarrantonio died January 28 aged 72. Sarrantonio's works include Horrorween (which starts the Orangefield series), Personal Agendas, and the short story collection Toybox.

Journalist, novelist, and translator Marina Colasanti died January 28 aged 87. Colasanti's works include Doze Reis e a Moça no Labirinto do Vento, A moça tecelã, and Ana Z. aonde vai você?.

Crime novelist Amer Anwar died of cancer this month aged 57. His novels were Brothers in Blood and Stone Cold Trouble

Singer and actress Marianne Faithfull died January 30 at the age of 78. She wrote Memories.

Ice skater and sportscaster Dick Button died January 30 at the age of 95. His books include The Fabulous Ice Age, Push Dick's Button: A Conversation on Skating from a Good Part of the Last Century--and a Little Tomfoolery, and Instant skating.

Former journalist Charlotte Raven died on 21 January aged 55. Her memoir of being diagnosed and living with a degenerative life limiting illness (Huntingdon's disease) is Patient 1: Forgetting and Finding Myself.

Chef Charles Phan died January 20 age 62. His cookbooks include The Slanted Door: Modern Vietnamese Food

Animal trainer Karen Pryor died January 4 aged 93. Pryor's works include Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training, Reaching the Animal Mind: Clicker Training and What It Teaches Us About All Animals, and Lads Before the Wind : Diary of a Dolphin Trainer.

Novelist, essayist, and translator Mariano Antolín Rato died January 10 aged 81. In addition to his own books Abril blues and Botas de cuero español, Antolín Rato's translations include The sound and the fury by William Faulkner, Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein, Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff, and Bob Dylan, 2.

Literary biographer and professor Catherine Peters died January 12 aged 94. Peters's works include The king of inventors : a life of Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens (Sutton Pocket Biographies), and Thackeray: A Writer's Life.

Codebreaker and writer Gwen Watkins died January 14 aged 101. Watkins' works include Sounds from the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors (with Gordon Claridge and Ruth Pryor) and Cracking the Luftwaffe codes : the secrets of Bletchley Park.

Public health advocate, psychologist, and research professor Ernest Drucker died January 26 aged 84. Drucker wrote A plague of prisons the epidemiology of mass incarceration in America and edited Decarcerating America : from mass punishment to public health.

Writer, reviewer and walker Geoff Nicholson died January 18 aged 71. Nicholson's works include The lost art of walking : the history, science, philosophy, and literature of pedestrianism and the novels Bleeding London and Bedlam Burning.

Agrochemical executive with a side gig as a DIY gardening author D. G. Hessayon died January 16 aged 76. His popular series of books started with Be Your Own Gardening Expert and eventually included The new house plant expert and The Bedside Book of the Garden.

Editor, writer, and sword-and-sorcery fan Howard Andrew Jones died January 16 aged 56. Jones works include the eight volumes of Howard Lamb's short fiction that he edited, The chronicles of sword and sand series (starting with The desert of souls), and many issues of Black Gate magazine and Tales from the Magician's Skull.

Economist Geoffrey Bell died January 1 at the age of 85. His books include The Competitive Enterprise: 10 Principles of Business Excellence for Increased Market Share and The Euro-dollar market and the international financial system.

Human geographer Brian J. L. Berry died January 2 at the age of 90. His books include The Rhythms of American Politics, America's Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens from Long-Wave Crises (The Nelson a. Rockefeller Series in Social Science and Public Policy), and The global economy : resource use, locational choice, and international trade.

Author and clown Howard Buten died January 3 at the age of 74. He wrote Histoire de Rofo, clown and When I Was Five I Killed Myself.

Journalist Colm Connolly died January 4 at the age of 82. He was the author of Michael Collins and The Voice.