Larry Hagman

Larry Hagman, who has died aged 81, was the American actor behind JR Ewing, the reptilian scion of a corrupt oil dynasty in the long-running television series Dallas.

The extraordinary success of Dallas owed much to Hagman’s portrayal of the scheming JR – arguably the most memorable villain in television history. The character certainly made Hagman one of the most recognised actors on the planet.

When, in the final episode of the 1980 season, JR was shot by an unknown assailant, hundreds of millions of people worldwide tuned in to watch the show. All summer viewers waited for the next episode as the phrase “Who shot JR?” resonated through the collective consciousness. The slogan became ubiquitous on T-shirts and in the tabloid press, and sociologists and media commentators debated the cultural significance of the series.

Those who never found out and still do not wish to know should look away now: The culprit was Kristin Shepard – JR’s equally snake-like sister-in-law and, inevitably, also his mistress.

Larry Hagman was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on September 21 1931. His mother was the actress Mary Martin and his father, Benjamin Hagman, was a lawyer retained by many Texan oilmen. After their divorce his mother married the producer and agent Richard Halliday. Young Larry lived periodically with his parents but mainly with his grandmother in Los Angeles, and was educated in a succession of private schools and finally at Bard College, New York – from which he dropped out after only a year.

After college he worked his apprenticeship in St John Terrell’s Theatre Company, in roles ranging from grip to stage manager. But his career was meandering when, in 1951, the hit Broadway musical South Pacific, in which his mother starred, transferred to London. She persuaded him to join her and take a small part, and he remained in Europe for five years, four as a director of shows for the US Air Force.

Upon his return to America, Hagman worked off-Broadway until 1959, when he won roles on Broadway in God and Kate Murphy and The Nervous. Meanwhile, he was cutting his teeth in New York-based television programmes ranging from serious drama to daytime soaps such as The Edge of the Night (1961-63).

He made his debut in the cinema in 1964 with Ensign Pulver, a naval drama starring Walter Matthau and Burl Ives. The same year, in the nuclear suspense feature Failsafe, he was, according to the Washington Post: “Outstanding, showing creative work in a minor role.” Hagman moved to Hollywood that year and won the main part in the NBC sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. The pilot show concerned an astronaut who meets a genie when he is stranded on a desert island, while the subsequent series followed the adventures of the pair when they return home. An unexpected international success, it ran for five years and made Hagman something of a celebrity.

Off-screen, however, his emotions were becoming increasingly turbulent and eventually he suffered a breakdown, which was followed by an extensive period of psychotherapy. His health was not helped by the fact that I Dream of Jeannie was succeeded by two sitcom flops: The Good Life (1971, in which he starred as a stockbroker turned butler) and Here We Go Again (1973, about two divorced couples). He was also making little headway on the big screen, performing in barely reviewed films such as Up in the Cellar (1970), Harry and Tonto (1974), and his own directorial debut, the unalluring Beware! The Blob (1972).

A harbinger of his future success in Dallas was his fine performance in Stardust (1975), which also starred David Essex. In the film he portrayed a materialistic American businessman who buys the contract of a British rock group and, acting as their manager and Svengali, drives them to self-destructive superstardom.

In spite of this critical success he still found it difficult to attract quality scripts. He did his best with the crudely drawn psychopath in the black comedy about freelance ambulance drivers, Mother, Jugs and Speed (1976), but there was nothing he could do to redeem The Big Bus (1976), an ill-judged satire on the disaster movie genre.

When he finally won a part in a superior film, The Eagle Has Landed (1977), based on Jack Higgins’s novel about a German attempt to kidnap Winston Churchill during the Second World War, Hagman was unfortunately cast as a stereotypical American officer. He played another American soldier, an incidental part, in the money-spinning adventure Superman (1978).

Throughout the Seventies Hagman had worked in made-for-television features such as Vanished (1971), No Place to Run (1972) and the Sherlock Holmes spoof The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective (1976). Some of these films, such as Sidekicks (1974) were intended as pilots for future situation comedies that never materialised. This, it seemed, was to be the leitmotif of his career.

Then, in 1978, his life was transformed when he won the part of JR Ewing in Dallas (1978-90), a series whose success far outstripped the most optimistic expectations. Conceived for Lorimar Productions by David Jacobs — who had never been to Texas — as an inversion of Lorimar’s long-running and homily-ridden The Waltons, Dallas was a multi-generational saga of an oil-and-cattle-rich family feuding among themselves and with their neighbours. Intended initially as a vehicle for the stars Linda Evans and Patrick Duffy, Hagman’s supreme performance as JR (memorably described in Time as “an overstuffed Iago in a stetson”) — stole the show to such an extent that Evans soon departed, claiming it was “unworthy” of her talents. (Insufficiently unworthy, it transpired, to stop her appearing in Dynasty, a pale imitation of the formula.)

Each episode of Dallas was budgeted at $700,000 (seven times the average for an entire series) as no expense was spared in efforts to beguile the viewer. The plot-lines were heady enough. Tales of alcoholism, adultery, murder, illegitimacy, consigning one’s wife to an institution and relentless corruption were, if the show was to be believed, simply the currency of day-to-day existence in Texas.

The series, which created a new genre of high-budget television serials, was finely balanced between satire and a celebration of the events it portrayed. By the mid-Eighties it was the most popular television show in the world — Turkish MPs once curtailed a meeting to see it. Its creators felt at liberty to script the most unlikely plot contortions: the same character was played in different series by different actors and actresses while JR’s brother, Bobby, was killed, only to reappear in the next series, with his wife Pam claiming it was “just” a bad dream. However, in spite of increasing narrative gymnastics and the introduction of celebrity actresses, its popularity dwindled in the late Eighties and, although it outlasted its glossy progeny such as Dynasty and Knots Landing, it finally met its demise in 1990.

Hagman, who became a major international star and was, after early contractual difficulties, richly rewarded for his part, effectively retired. He made only occasional appearances on screen thereafter, notably in the political films Nixon (1995) and Primary Colours (1998). He also guest starred in other television series, such as Desperate Housewives (2010).

A life of leisure was not particularly good for his health: in 1995 he was the recipient of a liver transplant, as doctors had located a tumour. He had been diagnosed with cirrhosis three years previously, and acknowledged a fondness for hitting the bottle.

He managed to stop smoking, however, becoming the kind of former addict who is evangelical about kicking the habit. Hagman would even carry a battery-operated fan to blow smoke back at unrepentant tobacco fans.

He lived in later life in Malibu, where he was feted locally as an amiable eccentric with an infectious sense of humour, given to wearing outlandish clothes and organising unexpected beach parties. He would hand out autographs in return for a good joke and, as a practitioner of Zen meditation, refused to speak on Sundays.

Then, just as its characters had done so many times, Dallas made an unlikely comeback. Hagman was cast with other members of the original cast, including Linda Gray (who played JR’s wife, Sue Ellen) and Duffy (JR’s younger brother). Hagman was widely acclaimed as the best thing about the relaunch, a second series of which will now be rewritten to take into account his death.

He married Maj Axelsson, a Swedish dress designer, in 1954. She survives him with their son and daughter.

Larry Hagman, born September 21 1931, died November 21 2012

Corrie Sanders

Corrie Sanders, who has been shot dead aged 46, won the WBO heavyweight boxing championship in remarkable fashion on March 8 2003.

Corrie Sanders (left) after his surprise victory over Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko 

The South African Sanders was already a grizzled 37-year-old veteran with 39 pro fights behind him when he met the giant Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko in front of a capacity crowd in Hanover, Germany, going into the fight a 40-1 underdog having agreed to contest the bout at short notice.

The overwhelmingly pro-Klitschko spectators at the Preussag Arena considered the result a foregone conclusion, and were astounded when Sanders (at 6ft 4in, three inches shorter than his opponent) floored Klitschko four times to take the Ukrainian’s title in only the second round. Ring magazine declared it the “upset of the year”.

Sanders’s victory was all the more notable in that Klitschko — the younger of two formidable boxing brothers — was seen as the likely heir to Britain’s Lennox Lewis, whose career was nearing its end.

For the next year Sanders was considered a major player on the heavyweight scene – then, in April 2004, Wladimir’s elder brother Vitali stopped him in Los Angeles to capture the vacant WBC crown, Sanders having previously relinquished his WBO belt to concentrate on a challenge for the WBC title.

Although Boxing News claimed that, over the preceding 12 months, Sanders had “spent more time swinging his golf clubs than his arms at a punchbag”, the fight with Vitaly was a rip-roaring encounter. Once again the underdog, Sanders shook his opponent with the occasional counterpunch and showed considerable resilience and courage; but he took some heavy blows, and although he never went down, the referee stopped the fight in the eighth round. He finished the contest with a broken nose, swollen ears and a deep laceration over his eye. He subsequently underwent brain scans.

Sanders duly announced his retirement, claiming that not even the offer of $1 million would tempt him back into the ring.

An upright southpaw who specialised in early knockouts, Sanders’s somewhat lumbering, unathletic approach belied fast hands and a good tactical brain. Many of his best wins – including that over Klitschko – resulted from a deceptively slow start followed by a major offensive consisting of a lethally accurate punches thrown in clusters – hence his nickname “The Sniper”. He tended to box with a low guard, however, and each of his four losses came prematurely.

Born on January 7 1966, Cornelius Johannes Sanders was introduced to boxing by his father aged seven and burst into tears when he was punched in the face. He persevered, however, and went on to become a seven-times national champion, winning 180 amateur contests and losing only 11.

He launched his professional career with a first-round knockout of King Kong Dyubele and quickly ran up 23 straight wins before losing in two rounds to the American Nate Tubbs in May 1994.

He gradually rose in class, winning the lightly-regarded World Boxing Union crown along the way, before announcing his belated arrival on the world stage in a game defeat against the American Hasim Rahman in May 2000. Two stoppage victories – one against Britain’s Michael Sprott – set him up for his unexpected world title shot against Klitschko.

Sanders did not remain in retirement for long, returning to the ring in December 2004 to stop Russia’s Alexey Varakin in two rounds. Wins over Australia’s Colin Wilson and Brazil’s Daniel Bispo followed, before a first-round defeat against his fellow South African Osborne Machimana on February 2 2008 persuaded Sanders to hang up his gloves for good.

Sanders was enjoying a family celebration at a restaurant in northern Johannesburg when he was shot dead during an armed robbery.

Corrie Sanders, born January 7 1966, died September 23 2012

Tony Martin

Tony Martin, the American vocalist and actor, who has died aged 98, sang with several post-war big bands and was touted in Hollywood as the new Clark Gable; in the 1950s he became a popular star in Britain through appearances at the London Palladium with his second wife, the dancer Cyd Charisse.

Dark-haired and handsome, Martin was originally a saxophonist bandleader whose rich, virile tones found particular favour with women. He arrived in Hollywood when he was just 24 and, though he never really adjusted to the feverish lifestyle, made several memorable films, among them The Big Store (1941), Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), Deep In My Heart (1954) and Hit The Deck (1955).

He was also in the remake of Charles Boyer’s Algiers, retitled Casbah, in 1948. Mischievously, Martin let it be known that Boyer had invited him to “come with me to the Casbah”, a tale that dogged the unfortunate Frenchman for the rest of his days.

Giving up films, Martin and his long-legged second wife formed an act which toured the more exclusive American supper clubs and, on several occasions, played the London Palladium. Indeed, such were Martin’s many achievements in radio, recording, films and television that he has the unusual honour of appearing no fewer than four times on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Tony Martin was born Alvin Morris Jr on Christmas Day 1913 in San Francisco, and educated at Oakland High School and St Mary’s College. From childhood he sang for family and friends, and as a teenager proficient on clarinet and saxophone he formed a quartet backing small-time acts in vaudeville halls.

Having failed his Law finals at college — prompting a lifelong jibe about him never having passed a bar since — Martin began touring nightclubs playing saxophone and singing. He worked for the bandleaders Anson Weeks and Tom Gerun and played alongside a young Woody Herman.

Aiming to emulate Bing Crosby as a leading all-rounder, Martin wound down his instrumental work in favour of his voice. The singer Frances Langford then recommended that he try Hollywood on the strength of his good looks and fine physique.

Screen tests landed Martin a minor role in Follow the Fleet (1935), and shortly thereafter he was spotted in a nightclub by Darryl F Zanuck, who cast him in several films for Twentieth Century Fox, including Shirley Temple’s Poor Little Rich Girl and Sing, Baby, Sing (both 1936). In the latter he sang When Did You Leave Heaven? and starred alongside the Ritz Brothers and Alice Faye. Between 1936 and 1938 Martin made a dozen films for Fox, four of them with the sultry-voiced Alice Faye, whom he married in 1937.

Meanwhile his vocal powers as a theatre and club artist continued to grow. On radio he became Gracie Allen’s boyfriend in The Burns and Allen Show and he recorded eight times with the Ray Noble Orchestra for the Brunswick label. In March 1939 he had his first multimillion seller with Begin the Beguine, coupled with September Song.

In 1941 he moved to MGM, where film moguls had promised to build him into another Clark Gable. Offered Ziegfeld Girl, Martin insisted on top billing over Jimmy Stewart, Judy Garland, Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr. This demand may have been tongue-in-cheek; and in 1977 he confessed to the BBC: “Can you imagine being paid a good salary to make love to those girls?” This was the film that featured You Stepped Out of a Dream, which became a standard and a tune with which Martin would be forever associated.

Martin worked next with the Marx Brothers, playing the song demonstrator in The Big Store. The film featured the Tenement Symphony which, with its themes of peace and racial goodwill, became a favourite wartime morale-booster, especially with British audiences.

The war caught Martin’s career on the crest of a wave, and following Pearl Harbor he joined the US Army Air Force. Eventually he was seconded to the Glenn Miller Orchestra as a vocalist, achieving the distinction of being liked not just by Miller but by the band members too, defying the traditional enmity between musicians and the singers they accompany.

On demobilisation Martin returned to Hollywood and in 1946 he sang in Till The Clouds Roll By, the biopic about the songwriter Jerome Kern. In the same year his recording of To Each His Own reached number four in the record charts.

The early post-war years took him to London, where he appeared at the Palladium to great acclaim. He revived his film career in Bob Hope’s Here Come The Girls in 1952 and the following year he achieved his ambition to work with Esther Williams in Easy to Love (1953).

Martin’s last two significant film roles featured him singing Lover Come Back To Me in the Sigmund Romberg biopic Deep In My Heart and a forgettable comedy, Let’s Be Happy (1957), filmed in Scotland. In 1982 he had a cameo role in Joe Pesci’s film Dear Mr Wonderful.

From the 1960s Martin concentrated on his work as a nightclub vocalist and his own television show, on which he developed a distinctive style of deadpan humour. He continued to release records, having particular success in Britain with Stranger in Paradise and Walk Hand In Hand, which reached numbers seven and four respectively in the charts.

In 1984 he appeared in his final British tour, still delighting fans with numbers such as Feelings; I Write the Songs; and What I Did For Love.

Tony Martin’s marriage to Alice Faye ended in divorce in 1941. He married Cyd Charisse in 1948 and their notably happy marriage of 60 years was one of the longest in Hollywood. She died in 2008, and he is survived by a stepson from his second wife’s first marriage. His son, Tony Martin Jr, predeceased him in April 2011.

Tony Martin, born December 25 1913, died July 27 2012

Zhou Ruchang

Zhou Ruchang, who has died aged 94, was one of China’s greatest literary scholars, devoting almost seven decades of his life to the study of just one novel: the enigmatic masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber.

Zhou Ruchang 

Until a week before his death, Zhou was still hard at work, dictating the framework of a new book to his daughter. “My father did not care about fame and he did not fear death,” she said. “The only thing he could not let go of was this book.”

The Dream of the Red Chamber, a sprawling and allegorical portrait of life during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), is China’s greatest novel, a

work so multi-layered and allusive it has spawned its own field of scholarship: “Redology”.

Zhou was perhaps China’s most famous Redologist, and his 1953 book,New Evidence on the Dream of the Red Chamber, drew on 1,000 sources, and research inside government archives and at the Forbidden City, to put together a portrait of the book’s author, Cao Xueqin, and his family.

Zhou’s scholarship brought him to the attention of China’s then new leader, Mao Tse-tung, who claimed to be such a fan of the novel that he had read it five times.

Cao was descended from a Chinese bondservant who had been a favourite of the Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722), and his family had lived in high style in Nanjing. But the Cao family fell from grace under the subsequent rule of Emperor Yongzheng and had its property confiscated.

On the surface, his novel, thought to be semi-autobiographical, paints the lives and loves of two families during the Qing dynasty, presenting a cast of some 40 major characters and almost 500 minor ones.

The novel was unfinished when Cao died in 1763, and for several decades it circulated in manuscript form among his family and friends before being published, with a number of additional chapters (possibly edited or written by subsequent hands), in 1792.

Zhou wrote more than 50 books about the novel, one of which was a 10-volume edition of textual analysis of the various manuscripts.

The critic Anthony West said that the novel is to the Chinese “very much what The Brothers Karamazov is to Russian and Remembrance of Things Past is to French literature” and that it is “beyond question one of the great novels of all literature”.

Born in Tianjin on April 14 1918, Zhou was the youngest of five brothers. His father was a scholar and had been a government official in the seaside city.

He was a shy but able student and had a passion for carpentry, constructing his own book cases. He later said his devotion to Dream of the Red Chamber stemmed from his mother’s habit of reading it to him when he was a child.

At high school he volunteered for the army, but his student brigade was dismissed, out of concern for its safety when a real war, with Japan, loomed.

Instead, he studied English literature first at Yenching University and then, in 1947, at Peking University, where his translations of Shelley’s poetry impressed Qian Zhongshu, the author of Fortress Besieged, a tale of middle-class life in the 1930s that is considered a masterpiece of Chinese 20th-century fiction.

Zhou’s wife, Mao Shuren, recalled that he was such a passionate poet that he would ask her to name a topic and then spontaneously compose verse. He later moved to teach at Sichuan University before transferring to the Chinese National Academy of Arts.

In 1968, during the febrile anti-intellectualism of the Cultural Revolution, he was imprisoned in a cowshed and then sent the following year to watch over a vegetable patch in Hubei province. By 1970, however, he had been rehabilitated and transferred back to Beijing.

By then, his already poor eyesight was all but lost, and he wrote in large, overlapping characters or dictated his work. In later life, when he appeared on television to discuss Dream of the Red Chamber, he used no notes because he could not read them. Nevertheless, his enthusiasm for learning was undimmed. Zhou said with his poor sight and hearing he had become adept at introspection and contemplation.

Ronald Gray, an American scholar of the book, said he had contacted Zhou last year to let him know about Robert Morrison, a Protestant missionary who in 1823 had spirited seven copies of Dream of the Red Chamber to England.

“I very quickly got a response [from Zhou] that was positively dripping with excitement. He had a host of questions, and keep in mind that he was 93 at the time,” he said. “Whenever I visited him, he would, at times, become so excited about the novel that his daughter, who took care of him and was his personal secretary, had to tell him to slow down.”

Despite his literary fame, Zhou lived modestly in a small apartment in Beijing with his three daughters, who survive him. He requested no funeral service. “I have lived a life with no regrets,” he said on his deathbed.

Zhou Ruchang, born April 14 1918, died May 31 2012

Captain Christopher 'Beagle’ Burne

Captain Christopher 'Beagle’ Burne, who has died aged 80, commanded four ships in the Cold War-era Royal Navy and played a crucial if unusual role in the Falklands conflict.

Captain Christopher Burne 

Following the Argentine invasion of April 1982, Burne was appointed senior naval officer of the 45,000-ton luxury liner Canberra, which was converted into a troop transport and incorporated into the Task Force sent to retake the islands. The transformation of the ship into a military vessel was a delicate, complex challenge: Canberra already had an experienced master and 400-strong civilian crew, to which were added more than 2,000 marines and paratroopers.

Burne’s task was to impose naval discipline and authority , and to do so under the scrutiny of a dozen sceptical journalists. He was frank with the newspapermen, telling them that he did not want them in Canberra and certainly not in such numbers, though later they agreed that Burne was extremely helpful, particularly after the landings in the Falklands had begun.

On May 21 1982, during the landings in San Carlos Water, Canberra’s size and white hull made her an obvious target, but disembarkation of troops continued throughout the day until they had been landed without loss or injury. As bombs plunged into the water nearby, it seemed impossible that the vast ship could escape. On deck, Burne met the attacks with unshakeable humour and courage, keeping up a running commentary to the frightened men and women below decks and encouraging gunners to “Engage! Engage!” as enemy aircraft swept overhead.

It was a performance in the great tradition of eccentric naval officers at moments of crisis and inspired others on board to emulate his apparent nonchalance in the face of danger. Canberra emerged unscathed from some 60 air attacks. Later she returned to a heroes’ welcome at Southampton, and Burne was appointed CBE.

Christopher Peter Oldbury Burne was born on January 27 1932 in Alexandria, where his father was serving in the Army. The family moved to France and then to north Devon before the outbreak of the Second World War, at which point Christopher’s then retired father re-enlisted; he was captured while serving with the 12th Royal Lancers in North Africa. In 1945 Christopher entered the Royal Naval College, where his enthusiasm for hunting with the college pack, and a perceived resemblance to his favourite breed of hound, saw him emerge with a nickname that stuck for the rest of his career.

He spent the next decade at sea, until he specialised in 1956 as a gunnery officer. In 1958 he was appointed Field Gun Officer at Devonport, responsible for recruiting and training the West Country crew for the annual, fiercely contested, field gun competition at the Royal Tournament. Burne’s leadership inspired a clean sweep of trophies by his team. Then, from 1959 to 1961, he was second gunnery officer of the cruiser Tiger while she was flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet. Tiger was a new ship fitted with fully automatic 6in and 3in guns, but these were temperamental, and Burne dedicated himself to understanding the technology behind them and getting them to work.

In 1962-63 Burne was a divisional officer of Grenville division at Dartmouth before, in 1966-67, taking command of the frigates Tenby and Chichester. This was followed by a rare staff appointment: though he could quote the military strategist Clausewitz, Burne was no gilded staff officer; rather, his penchant was for solving practical problems and inspiring his men .

In 1971-72 Burne commanded the Royal Navy’s leadership school, HMS Royal Arthur, at Corsham, Wiltshire, where all petty officers were sent on first promotion. In 1973-75 he was second-in-command of the commando carrier Bulwark, and his first appointment on promotion to captain in 1976 was as Director of Naval Physical Training and Sport .

In 1978-80 Burne commissioned the new Type 42 destroyer Coventry at Portsmouth. The first commission of any ship is always a testing time, and Burne had the additional task of overseeing first-of-class trials of the Westland Lynx helicopter .

After the Falklands conflict Burne was given another challenge: the guided missile destroyer Glamorgan had been damaged in the fighting by an Exocet missile. After dockyard repairs, he immediately guided her back into service, evacuating refugees from Beirut during the Lebanese civil war.

Having left the Service in 1985, Burne spent two years training the Sultan of Oman’s navy. Afterwards he continued to hunt with the Park Beagles in West Dorset and was a bell-ringer and lay reader at his local church in Somerset.

Christopher Burne enjoyed cycling holidays, and took his bicycle with him on every warship, arguing that it was the cheapest way to explore new ports. He died while cycling to his village’s Diamond Jubilee party.

He is survived by his wife, Belinda Coryton, whom he married in 1969, and their two children.

Captain Christopher “Beagle” Burne, born January 27 1932, died June 2 2012

Yitzhak Shamir

Yitzhak Shamir, who has died aged 96, was a former terrorist who, a little to his own surprise, found himself Prime Minister of Israel in 1983.

He only entered the Knesset in 1973, when he was nearly 60, as a member of Menachem Begin’s Herut party (which was later to merge with other right wing groups to form Likud). In 1977 he was elected Speaker and three years later he became Foreign Minister.

It was a curious appointment, not only because had he never held any ministerial office before, but also because he differed profoundly from Begin on perhaps the key element in his foreign policy, the 1978 Camp David Accords which led to peace, the following year, between Israel and Egypt.

Moreover, Shamir was a virtually unknown quantity, for his past was shrouded in mystery, but that, if anything, helped, for it gave him something he otherwise lacked, a certain amount of glamour .

The Foreign Ministry seemed to make him heir apparent to Begin, although they were almost exact contemporaries and Begin had no immediate or even distant plans to retire. But then, in August 1983, about a year after the invasion of Lebanon, Begin suffered a nervous collapse and resigned. David Levy, who was Deputy Prime Minister, made a bid to succeed him, but was easily beaten by Shamir. He had got to the top in a mere 10 years without any apparent effort to get there, and his whole career suggests that advancement is dependent less on ability than on being in the right place at the right time.

Yitzhak Shamir was born Yitzhak Yernitsky on October 15 1915 in Ruzinoy. Like Begin he was a Pole. Like Begin he spent his youth in the right wing Zionist Revisionist party. Both men studied Law at Warsaw University, and both were tough and tenacious, but there the similarities stopped. Begin was a cultivated man and a great orator with something of the urbanity and grace of a Polish gentleman. Shamir was not, though his forceful, aggressive manner of speech had it own compelling qualities.

There was nothing about him to suggest culture or learning, though in the course of his peregrinations — some of them enforced — he had picked up several European languages. He was short, but powerfully built, like a sawn-off all-in-wrestler, and had the thrusting rapid stride of a man who knew where he was going and was in a hurry to get there. But he was not without charm and had a grim little smile, like a flicker of sunshine breaking through a wintry sky.

He went to Palestine in 1935, studied at the Hebrew University, worked for a time as a building labourer and bookkeeper, and, after the 1936 Arab riots, joined the Irgun Zvei Lumi.

While Haganah, the defence arm of the Zionist movement, was concerned merely to repel attacks, the Irgun was determined to go over to the offensive. Haganah, moreover, only confronted the Arabs, while Irgun was also prepared to take on the British administration. When the Second World War broke out, however, the Irgun called a truce. Shamir moved over to the Stern Gang, which continued the struggle with the British as if Hitler had never existed.

In 1941 Shamir was arrested and imprisoned in Acre, but he escaped a year later. Avraham Stern had been killed some months previously and Shamir helped to reorganise the gang and became chief of operations.

With him in this leading role, the gang attempted to assassinate Sir Harold MacMichael, the British High Commissioner, in August 1944. Three months later its members murdered Lord Moyne, British Resident Minister in the Middle East. Shamir was said to be involved in both operations, and according to an associate of those days, Israel Eldad, he was directly implicated in the murder, in September 1948, of the Swedish count, Folke Bernadotte, who was the UN mediator in the Arab-Israel war. The fact is that the Stern Gang never had more than about 100 members, and as Shamir was a key figure, he probably had a hand in all three.

In 1946, after Irgun bombed the King David Hotel, killing 91 people, Shamir was rounded up with numerous other Jewish underground leaders and interned in Eritrea. But he escaped via Ethiopia and French Somaliland, and lingered in France till Israel became independent in May 1948 and it was safe to return.

In the same year he tried to organise his former underground association into a political party, without much success, and then dabbled in business with even less success. He served in Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, for 10 years and was said to have displayed both considerable ingenuity and very considerable courage.

When he did become a backbencher in the Knesset, he did not shine, though he proved an effective Speaker and did much to raise both the decorum of the house and to limit the interjections of the more prolix members. And it was as Speaker that he formally escorted Egypt’s President Sadat to the rostrum, on November 20 1977, during his historic visit to Israel.

Shamir was, however, far from happy with the eventual outcome of that visit. He felt that Begin went on to make far too many concessions in the Camp David agreement and when it was formally tabled in the Knesset, he abstained from the vote.

In October 1979 Moshe Dayan, who had left the Labour alignment to become Foreign Minister in Begin’s administration, resigned in protest at the hard-line policies followed by the government in the occupied territories. At first Begin, in the absence of an obvious candidate for the office, acted as his own Foreign Minister, but in March 1980 he passed on the job to Shamir.

Shamir soon surprised his critics, and indeed his friends, by his adept handling of foreign policy. He improved relations with several African and Latin American states and opened a dialogue with the Soviet Union, which had broken diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967, and when Begin resigned in August 1983, he emerged as his natural successor.

But he had inherited a bed of nails. The army was bogged down in the Lebanese mire. Inflation was approaching 600 per cent and the economy was on the point of collapse. He immediately introduced grim austerity measures which, though not economically grim enough, did little to add to his popularity, and when elections came round the following year it was generally believed that while a Begin might have won them, a Shamir could only lose.

In the event he held Labour to a draw and after prolonged negotiations the two parties agreed to form a national government, with Shimon Peres as Prime Minister for the first half of its life, and Shamir for the second.

Peres extricated the army from Lebanon, brought solvency and stability to the economy, and improved the international standing of the country.

When Shamir took over in 1986 he built on his achievements, but where Peres had made some attempt to meet the aspirations of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, Shamir gave them nothing to hope for, and in December 1987 they erupted in open rebellion.

The first intifada dominated the 1988 election which in some ways became a referendum on the future of the occupied territories. Both parties agreed that there would have to be a political solution to the uprising, but while Peres accepted that Israel would have to make territorial concessions, Shamir would not hear of them. The result was another draw, but the religious parties had made important gains, and as neither Likud nor Labour had sufficient seats or allies to form a government without them, negotiations were prolonged.

Shamir managed to outmanoeuvre all comers, and eventually formed a national government with himself as Prime Minister and Peres as Finance Minister, through another rotation agreement. The coalition fell apart over his intransigent attitude in March 1990, when he came under intense pressure from Peres, America and the EEC, to enter into negotiations with the Palestinians. But after several months of haggling he managed to patch up a new administration without Labour support.

There was no respite, however, and as soon as he formed a new government, pressure was renewed and he was bracing himself for a showdown with America when a new figure came to dominate the Middle East scene in the person of Saddam Hussein. Iraq replaced Israel as America’s most pressing concern in the region and the pressure on Shamir suddenly eased. It was as if the fates, which had carried him safely through so many hazards in his younger years, and had wafted him to high office in his later ones, had interceded yet again on his behalf.

But there was a high price to pay. As the first Gulf War got under way, Iraq targeted Israeli cities with dozens of Scud missiles, which, though often inaccurate and ineffective, killing only two people, posed a terrifying menace, particularly as Hussein had threatened to tip them with chemical warheads. The Scud attacks also challenged Israel’s long held doctrine that no attack on it would go unpunished. Under intense pressure from America however, which was determined to keep its Arab allies on board in the campaign, Shamir reluctantly agreed not to order a military response. “I can think of nothing that went more against my grain as a Jew and a Zionist,” he wrote later.

If that restraint boosted Israel’s credit with America, Shamir’s hawkish attitude to the Palestinians quickly strained ties again. He was at best a reluctant participant at the Madrid Conference of October 1991, co-sponsored by the US and USSR, taking a 14-man delegation deeply sceptical of any “land for peace” deal in the Occupied Territories.

By this time Israel’s economy was again in trouble, particularly under the financial strain of absorbing a huge new wave of immigrants making their aliyah after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the two decades since 1989, more than a million (of Israel’s seven million-strong population) immigrants have arrived from former members of the USSR. In 1990 and 1991 alone Shamir’s government had to deal with 350,000.

There were other arrivals, who, though fewer in number, were evacuated from Ethiopia in circumstances of greater drama. In May 1991, with Ethiopia’s government close to collapse and the prospect of a regional war growing, Israel airlifted almost 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Tel Aviv in only 36 hours, in a plan named Operation Solomon.

It was the kind of daring and ambitious foray on to foreign soil for which Israel was already famous. But Shamir’s premiership was to be undone by that other characteristically Israeli trait — political squabbling and in-fighting.

Despite his — at best — grudging participation in the Madrid talks, he found on his return to Jerusalem that his right-wing coalition partners thought he had not been tough enough in negotiations with the Arab delegations.

Just as he had thought Begin too soft on Sadat, so he was now regarded by many on his own side as too easy on the PLO. His government collapsed, and, with voters frustrated with Likud after five years of intifada, and attracted to the possibility of a Labour government under the new leadership of former Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, Shamir’s miraculous political career began to wind down.

Binyamin Netanyahu took over from him as leader of Likud. From the opposition back benches Shamir continued his uncompromising stance about talks with the Palestinians, fiercely rejecting Rabin’s talks with the PLO. When, seven months after Rabin’s assassination in November 1995, Netanyahu led Likud to election victory, Shamir finally retired.

Yitzhak Shamir, whose wife Shulamit died last year, and who is survived by their son and daughter, was undoubtedly an astute politician. But his astuteness, born from early years in an underground armed movement, never amounted to statesmanship. As a man who declared, after leaving the Knesset for the last time, that “we made progress, and I hope we will again, but never by concessions, never by submission”, he will be better remembered for his obstinacy than his vision.

Yitzhak Shamir, born October 15 1915, died June 30 2012

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, who has died aged 76, created the Porsche 911, the vehicle of choice for many sports car enthusiasts and macho, upwardly mobile young plutocrats.

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche standing next to a 911 Carrera 2 3.6 Coupe from 1992. 

The car was first introduced in 1963, when “FA” (as Ferdinand Alexander was known) was in charge of the company’s design studio. It was conceived as a replacement for the Porsche 356, and was notable for his long bonnet, sloping teardrop roof line and potent rear engine; whereas the 356 had a four-cylinder engine, the new model was six-cylinder. The 911 (which is now in its seventh version) was originally designated 901, but the number had to be changed, as Peugeot claimed a patent on names with a zero in the middle.

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche was born in Stuttgart on December 11 1935, the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951), who founded the eponymous firm in 1931, created the Volkswagen Beetle and contributed to the development of Germany’s wartime tanks and the V-1 flying bomb. His son Ferry (FA’s father) became chairman of the company.

After attending school in Stuttgart, FA studied at the Ulm School of Design and joined the family business in 1958 as an apprentice in the technical design department, where he immersed himself in the principles of aerodynamics, engine-building and styling. The Porsche 356, meanwhile, had been in production since 1950, and Ferry was contemplating a replacement. This was FA’s chance, and he came up with the new model, which was introduced at a motor show in 1963, by which time he was head of design.

Not only was the 911 more powerful than its predecessor, it also had more room in front and in the back (it was introduced as a four-seater), and bigger doors. Also, the body of the car had a simpler, sleeker look. FA always considered himself more of a designer than an engineer, and insisted: “Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics, without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained.”

So successful was the 911 that the company has continued to produce evolved versions of it ever since. The most recent model was unveiled at the Frankfurt motor show last September.

From the beginning the car was a successful competitor in major sports car events, such as the Daytona and Targa Florio. In 1979, the 935 turbo took the Grand Prix d’Endurance at Le Mans, with Porsches filling seven of the first 10 places.

In 1972 FA established his own business, Porsche Design Studio, making watches, sunglasses, luggage and pens.

He served as chairman of Porsche AG from 1990 to 1993, helping to steady the firm as sales dipped in the late 1980s under pressure from global competition .

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, born December 11 1935, died April 5 2012

Jocky Wilson

Jocky Wilson , who has died aged 62, was the world darts champion in 1982 and 1989, and one of the game’s most engaging and popular characters.

Jocky Wilson: 1950 - 2012 

He looked the part, being short, stout and pasty. Sweets had rotted away his teeth by the time he was 28 (“But I can manage just about anything with my gums”), and his championship wins, which took place before the authorities attempted to sanitise the game by banning the on-stage consumption of alcohol, were fuelled by buckets of lager, chased down by vodka-and-coke. This intake only served to emphasise his phenomenal skill and hand-eye co-ordination.

Above all he will be remembered for his rivalry with Eric “The Crafty Cockney” Bristow, against whom Wilson secured his second World Championship title in dramatic fashion. Having raced to a 5-0 lead (needing six sets to win), Wilson appeared in total control, only for his confidence visibly to falter as Bristow, with nothing to lose, mounted a comeback. On several occasions Wilson was within a dart or two of clinching victory, only to miss and allow Bristow to claw his way closer. Bristow was himself within a whisker of tying the match at 5-5 when Wilson finally hit the double 10 he needed, and sank to his knees in relief.

Wilson’s first championship victory, 5-3 against the number two seed, John “Stone Face” Lowe, had come seven years earlier, on January 16 1982. “I sunk double 16 to win, and I was champ. I was drained of effort and just about in tears,” Wilson recalled. He gave his winning darts to a friend and the bars of his homeland echoed to a new ditty: “He’s 16 stone of fat and pain, / When he steps up the oche. / When he throws the spears you can hear the cheers / For Fife’s wee hero Jocky”.

John Thomas Wilson, known to all as Jocky, was born at Kirkcaldy, Fife, on March 22 1950. Educated locally, he took what jobs he could while developing his darting skills, mainly at the Lister Bar in the Lang Toun. When not there he worked in a fish processing plant and as a miner at the Seafield Colliery.

He was jobless when, in 1979, he won his first substantial prize in darts, the Butlin’s Grand Masters, which earned him £500. The sum rendered him ineligible for unemployment benefit, and his course was set. By the end of that year he was ranked in the top eight in the world.

His World Championship title in 1982 (when he also won the British Open Championship) came at a time when darts was arguably at its most popular. Millions watched on television and Bristow was fast becoming the game’s first celebrity – largely because of his cocksure determination to wind up his opponents and their fans. Above all he liked to wind up the Scots, making for a friendly rivalry with Wilson that last throughout the 1980s.

Wilson was the first Scot to win the world title, and reached the semi-finals in the following two years, and again in 1987, and the quarter-finals in 1985. 1986 and 1988.

In March 1987, against the American Bud Trumbower, he polished off a 1001-point leg in a remarkable 24-darts. In doing so, he scored 600 points with his first 12 arrows and finished with 60-20-40 to average 41.7 points per dart. Only occasionally did the booze obviously effect his game. In 1984 he was well in control of his World Championship semi-final against Dave Whitcombe, only to lose narrowly after sinking a prodigious number of pints. As Whitcombe walked backed from the dartboard to shake his opponent’s hand, Wilson was nowhere to be seen. He had fallen off the stage.

It was not too long before such antics began to attract the wrong kind of publicity, with broadcasters objecting to the game’s beer-swilling, working men’s club image. Old-school darts, and particularly players like Wilson, looked out of touch. His response was to observe: “If darts come off TV for good than I’m off to Japan to take up Sumo Wrestling.” Instead he joined several other players in a breakaway from the ruling British Darts Organisation, to form the World Darts Council. But this only led to a painful schism in British darts, with legal action that rumbled through the 1990s. Many players suffered bans, including Wilson.

This effectively ended his career. Legal costs bankrupted him and the pressure doubtless contributed to the high blood pressure, diabetes and depression from which he suffered. He was teetotal from 1993, and though a new slimline Jocky Wilson briefly emerged, he was fast retreating into his shell. His last match came in 1995 at a Butlin’s holiday camp in Ayr.

Though many tried to tempt him back to the oche, at least for well-paid exhibition matches, if not competitions, he chose to stay in his one-bedroom Kirkcaldy council flat, living on £67.50 incapacity benefit, and hardly going out.

In 1996 Wilson was elected to the Darts Hall of Fame. But he was only tracked down and presented with his plaque two years later, when he was mentioned on a website that listed Kirkcaldy’s favourite sons. His name was associated with merchandise including sets of darts and computer games, but Wilson himself remained doggedly out of sight, though he claimed, when asked, to be contented. His absence was mourned not least by his old foe, Eric Bristow: “I miss him. He was good for the game”.

Jocky Wilson is survived by his wife, Malvina, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

Jocky Wilson, born March 22 1950, died March 24 2012

Giorgio Chinaglia

Giorgio Chinaglia, who has died aged 65, began his footballing career as a boy in inner-city Cardiff but ended it playing alongside Pele and Franz Beckenbauer; in the meantime he became one of the greatest stars in the history of the Italian club Lazio.

Georgio Chinaglia 

Adored by the Lazio fans, Chinaglia was a volatile figure whose antics frequently got him into trouble. Once, when he visited a cinema, he was recognised by a fan of Lazio’s great rivals Roma. The fan mouthed an insult at Chinaglia, who did not react until the lights were dimmed; then he punched the man in the face.

When he was substituted while playing for Italy against Haiti in a World Cup group match in 1974, Chinaglia stormed down the tunnel, broke down the dressing room door and smashed eight mineral water bottles against the wall. It was the end of his international career.

Giorgio Chinaglia was born in Carrara, Tuscany, on January 24 1947, but when he was eight his family emigrated to Wales, his father later opening an Italian restaurant in Cardiff. Giorgio was educated at St Mary’s Catholic School in the Canton district of the city, and as a teenager was taken on by Swansea Town, where he soon exhibited his unpredictable temperament: when the club’s handyman asked him to help with a painting job, the young player picked up the paint tin and flung its contents against the wall of the stand.

In 1966 he returned to his native country, playing first for Massese before being talent-spotted in 1969 by Lazio. The turning point of his career came in 1971 when the club, relegated to Serie B, appointed Tommaso Maestrelli manager. Under Maestrelli, Chinaglia prospered, scoring 21 times as the team won promotion to Serie A.

In the 1973-74 season Chinaglia scored 24 goals, helping Lazio to secure their first ever Scudetto (Serie A championship). In 209 appearances for Lazio between 1969 and 1976, he scored 98 times, and has since been voted the club’s favourite player by Lazio’s fans.

In his 14 appearances for Italy, he was on the scoresheet on four occasions, but is perhaps best remembered in Britain for setting up the winning goal for Fabio Capello when the Azzurri beat England 1-0 in a friendly at Wembley in November 1973.

In 1976 Chinaglia moved to America to play for the New York Cosmos, where he turned out alongside a host of ageing stars including Pele, Beckenbauer, the Dutchman Johan Neeskens, Brazil’s Carlos Alberto and the Belgian Francois van der Elst.

There is a famous story that Chinaglia once complained that his team-mates were failing to provide him with adequate service on the pitch. When Pele replied that the striker was shooting from impossible angles, Chinaglia shouted: “I am Chinaglia. If I shoot from a place, it’s because Chinaglia can score from there.” It is claimed that Pele left the dressing room in tears.

Poor service or not, Chinaglia scored a remarkable 242 goals in 254 matches for the Cosmos, making him the North American Soccer League’s all-time leading scorer; he won four NASL titles with the team. In 2000 he was admitted to the US Soccer Hall of Fame.

After retiring as a player, Chinaglia served as president of Lazio from 1983 to 1985.

Chinaglia became an American citizen in 1979 and lived there following allegations that an organised crime ring tried to buy Lazio in 2006; at the time he was one of nine people for whom Italian authorities issued arrest warrants on charges of extortion and insider trading, but in the event he was never detained.

Latterly he worked as a radio show host. He died in Florida after suffering a heart attack.

Giorgio Chinaglia is survived by his wife, Angela, and five children, three of them from his first marriage.

Giorgio Chinaglia, born January 24 1947, died April 1 2012