Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

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Image captionRafsanjani remained a dominant figure in Iran after his presidency

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was a founding father of the Iranian revolution who went on to serve as the country's president between 1989 and 1997 and remained a powerful figure until his death on 8 January 2016, at the age of 82.

Seen as "pragmatic conservative", Rafsanjani was a leading member of the Iran's religious establishment who gained popularity in later life among the country's moderates. He boasted of a long-standing relationship with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, while also calling publicly for greater freedoms for Iranians.

Rafsanjani was also one of Iran's richest men, and he maintained close links to Iranian industry and business throughout his life. In 2003 he was featured in the Millionaire Mullahs section of the Forbes Rich List.

He was dogged by accusations that he abused his political connections to amass a large personal fortune - allegations that he always denied. His wealth and leadership style earned him a nickname among Iranians - "Akbar Shah", or "Great King".

By 2002, he had fallen out of favour with conservative clerics, military commanders, and public, and he lost his seat in parliament. But the same year he was elected head of the Expediency Council, a powerful body that adjudicates disputes over legislation, and held the post until his death.

He ran again for the presidency in 2005 but lost to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 2013 he attempted to run again, registering for the ballot with just minutes to go, but he was barred from standing by Iran's electoral watchdog.

He went on to be openly critical of Mr Ahmadinejad and became a key supporter of his reform-minded successor, Hassan Rouhani.

Khomeini follower

Born in 1934 in south-eastern Iran to a family of farmers, Rafsanjani studied theology in the holy city of Qom with Ayatollah Khomeini, whose close follower he became. He was imprisoned several times under the Shah.

He was speaker in the Majlis (Iran's parliament) from 1980 to 1989. In the last year of the 1980-88 war with Iraq, Ayatollah Khomeini appointed him acting commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

He was seen as the main mover behind Iran's acceptance of the UN Security Council resolution which ended the war.

As president, Rafsanjani sought to encourage a rapprochement with the West and re-establish Iran as a regional power.

His influence in Lebanon helped to bring about the release of Western hostages there in the early 1990s.

Pragmatic politics

Domestically, Rafsanjani pursued an economically liberal policy which critics said failed to deliver on social justice. He also opposed harsh Islamic penal codes and promoted better job prospects for women.

His financial policies aimed to move Iran from the state-controlled economy of the Iran-Iraq war years to a more market-based system.

Under Mr Ahmadinejad's presidency, from 2005 to 2013, he was a fierce critic of economic policies which he said seriously damaged Iran.

On the nuclear issue, he was in favour of negotiation with the West but warned his countrymen against "accepting bullying and imposition". Indeed, he warned Washington that its "threats" were futile.

In 2007, at Friday prayers, he spoke out against nuclear weapons and said he was disappointed that the US, which still has a nuclear arsenal, was trying to stop Iran from using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Kingmaker

In 2002, Mr Rafsanjani was appointed head of the powerful Expediency Council, which arbitrates in disputes between the Majlis and the Guardian Council which can block legislation.

In 2006, he was elected to the Assembly of Experts and a year later was voted leader of the body which appoints the supreme leader.

Hardliners within the Assembly of Experts were strongly opposed to Mr Rafsanjani's bid to remain as leader in elections in January 2009. He stood against Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a supporter of President Ahmadinejad, and won a convincing majority.

In the 2009 presidential election, he backed the reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who stood against President Ahmadinejad but was defeated.

Clash with Khamenei

Following that election supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei distanced himself from Mr Rafsanjani and took away his title of Tehran's Friday prayer leader.

Rafsanjani also lost his position as the head of the Assembly of Experts. His son Mehdi and daughter Faezeh were temporarily imprisoned on what many saw as trumped-up charges to put pressure on their father.

He was attacked by the conservative and right-wing press for suggesting that he might register for the elections.

But among the country's moderates Mr Rafsanjani was seen as a master manipulator who had a foot in the door of the establishment and a hand in the affairs of the opposition, and who could, theoretically, create a more open and predicable political climate.

Unable to stand in 2013, Rafsanjani supported moderate candidate Hassan Rouhani and Mr Rouhani's win gave the former president an insider role in reform efforts, including the new president's push for nuclear talks with the US.

His sudden death will be seen as a major blow to Mr Rouhani, who is preparing himself for re-election in May. Mr Rouhani was the first top official to attend the hospital where Mr Rafsanjani died. Reports say Mr Rouhani was in tears, and a crowd gathered outside the hospital after the announcement.

Rafsanjani is survived by his wife, Effat Marashi, their sons Mohsen, Mehdi and Yasser, and daughters Fatemeh and Faezeh. Faezeh is a prominent women's rights activist and former MP.

Lord Snowdon

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Lord Snowdon was a talented film maker and photographer whose marriage to Princess Margaret fed the gossip columns for over a decade.

His career was punctuated by lurid tales of extra-marital affairs, alcohol and drugs, but throughout it all he maintained a close contact with the Royal Family.

His body of photographic work featured the cream of British society, although he was usually dismissive about his work.

He was most proud of the stunning aviary he helped design for London Zoo.

He was born Anthony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones on 7 March 1930, into a family of minor gentry.

His father, Ronald, was a barrister while his mother, society beauty Anne Messel, later became Countess of Rosse, following her divorce from his father.

In his teens, he contracted polio and had to lie flat on his back for a year. It left him with a permanent limp.

But visits by such luminaries as Noel Coward and Marlene Dietrich, arranged by his uncle, the theatre designer Oliver Messel, helped alleviate the boredom.

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Image captionThe start of what was to prove a stormy marriage

He was educated at Eton, where his passion for photography began. He went on to Jesus College, Cambridge, and was cox of the victorious eight in the 1950 Boat Race.

He never completed his course on architecture, and at 21 took up photography as a career, setting up a studio of his own in London.

It was his flair for taking less formal photographs that earned him the commission, in 1956, for the 21st birthday pictures of the Duke of Kent.

Later he was invited to Buckingham Palace to photograph the Prince of Wales and other members of the Royal Family, including Princess Margaret.

Investiture

Unlike some photographers, he did not set out to create a rapport with his subjects.

"I don't want people to feel at ease," he once said. "You want a bit of an edge."

His engagement to Princess Margaret was announced in 1960.

At the time there had been no recent precedent for anyone so near to the throne marrying outside the ranks of royalty or the British peerage.

The wedding took place on 6 May 1960, and after a honeymoon tour of the Caribbean in the royal yacht Britannia, the young couple moved into Kensington Palace.

Early in 1961 Armstrong-Jones was raised to the peerage as Lord Snowdon, and he took his seat in the House of Lords a year later. A son, David, Viscount Linley, was born in 1961, and their daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, three years later.

In 1963 the Queen made him Constable of Caernarvon Castle, and as such he took a leading part in the arrangements for the investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969.

He was scathing about the ceremonial surrounding the event, claiming that most of the procedures used were "completely bogus".

Womanising

Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon went to Jamaica together in 1962, when the princess represented the Queen at the independence celebrations, and they made an official visit to the United States in 1964.

In the early years of their marriage, he and Princess Margaret were treated almost as Hollywood stars. The press relished incidents in which the Snowdons donned leather jackets and raced motorbikes along London's North Circular Road.

They consorted with celebrities of the day, and provided a marked contrast to the more conservative Queen and Prince Philip.

But the marriage quickly experienced the sort of difficulties that were destined to plague royal relationships over the following 20 years.

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Image captionHe had a flair for informal photography

Snowdon's womanising was part of the reason for the break-up. A natural charmer, he had a string of relationships throughout his life and seemed incapable of remaining faithful.

One close friend was quoted in a biography of the earl as saying: "If it moves, he'll have it."

Margaret's own predilection for late-night partying, and the desire of both of them to be the centre of attention, also fuelled the breakdown.

By then, Snowdon had embarked on a varied professional career - acting as adviser to the Council of Industrial Design, and working for various publications, including the Sunday Times.

Disabilities

The aviary he helped design for London Zoo opened in 1964. It was regarded as cutting-edge in its use of new materials, providing the maximum amount of space for birds to fly.

He helped to make several television documentaries. The first, Don't Count the Candles, from 1968, was about old age and won seven international awards.

In 1975 he directed two programmes in BBC television's Explorers series, and in 1981 he presented two programmes on photography, Snowdon on Camera, for which he was nominated for a Bafta Award.

Snowdon designed an electrically powered wheelchair, called the Chairmobile.

Image captionThe aviary at London zoo was regarded as a triumph of design

It was during a debate on the mobility of people with physical disabilities that he had made his maiden speech in the Lords in April 1974.

In March 1976, it was finally announced that he and Princess Margaret would live apart.

When Margaret had a relationship with Roddy Llewellyn, Snowdon was able to play the part, though not very convincingly, of the cuckolded husband, and the divorce became final in 1978.

Snowdon always refused to speak about the marriage but he regularly saw the children and continued to photograph the Royal Family.

Final straw

In December 1978, he was married again, to Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, a researcher on a BBC television series on which he was working. They had a daughter, Frances, the following July.

In June 1980 Snowdon started an award scheme for disabled students. The money for it came from the reproduction fees he had received over 20 years from his royal photographs.

The following year the Snowdon Council was formed, of which he was president. It comprised 12 members co-ordinating a dozen different bodies concerned with helping disabled people.

Also in 1981 a compromise was reached in his long-running row with Lord Aberconway, president of the Royal Horticultural Society, who had said that disabled visitors to the Chelsea Flower Show were not encouraged.

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Image captionHis subjects were often the rich and famous

It was agreed that guide dogs would be admitted, and a special garden was created for those with disabilities.

While married to Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, Snowdon had a long affair with journalist Ann Hills, who took her own life in 1996.

Two years later, at the age of 68, he fathered a son, Jasper, with 33-year-old Melanie Cable-Alexander, a journalist on Country Life.

This proved the final straw for Lucy, and the couple divorced.

By then Snowdon had lost his seat in the Lords, following Labour's clear-out of hereditary peers. Instead, he took a life peerage as Baron Armstrong-Jones to enable him to remain in the House.

Despite an increasing disability as a result of his childhood polio, Lord Snowdon travelled widely, doing work for the theatre and fashion houses as well as portraits and travelogues.

A friend once said of him, "It's impossible to imagine a gentler, more cultured man."

John Hurt

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Sir John Hurt was one of Britain's best-known and most versatile actors.

Over six decades, his distinctive voice and towering presence saw him much in demand for a variety of roles.

He successfully combined classical theatre with television and Hollywood blockbusters.

The death of his character in the film Alien has often been voted as one of cinema's most memorable moments.

John Vincent Hurt was born on 22 January 1940 in the town of Chesterfield in Derbyshire.

His father, originally a mathematician, had taken holy orders and when Hurt was five, became parish priest at Woodville on the Derbyshire-Leicestershire border.

His parents were reluctant to let him mix with local children, thinking them common, and although the family lived close to a cinema he was not allowed to go to see films.

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Image captionHis small role in The Wild and the Willing earned him £75 a week during shooting

His first taste of acting came at his prep school in Kent, an establishment Hurt later described as "so high Anglo-Catholic it was flying".

He played the part of a girl in a production of Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird, a tale of two children seeking happiness with the aid of a fairy.

"I felt an extraordinary feeling that I was in the place that I was meant to be," he recalled.

Hurt later revealed that he had been sexually abused by the school's headmaster.

Scholarship

When he was 12 his father was appointed to a church in Grimsby, and the family moved to Lincolnshire.

His parents, keen to see him in what they considered a respectable job, suggested he become an art teacher and he spent a short time at St Martin's School of Art in London

Money was a constant problem and on occasion, he persuaded some of his friends to pose nude and sold the portraits.

Image captionHurt (c) with Derek Jacobi and George Baker in I, Claudius

One of his subjects, then completely unknown to him, was Quentin Crisp, whom Hurt would later portray.

In 1960 he gained a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, a move that finally won his parents round and set him off on an acting career.

He fell in love with French cinema while studying in London, once going to see Jules et Jim every Sunday for seven weeks.

His somewhat bohemian existence persuaded him to become an agnostic, something that shocked his parents.

London stage

However, his brother's almost simultaneous announcement that he was becoming a Catholic rather took the sting from his parents' concerns over Hurt's lack of belief.

"That was the blackest day in the family history ever; that was my brother joining the antichrist."

When he finally graduated, he walked straight into a small role in a 1962 film, The Wild and the Willing, which earned him the princely sum of £75 a week.

Image captionJohn Hurt in the character of Quentin Crisp

Hurt began performing on the London stage and married actress Annette Robertson, although the union lasted less than two years.

His first significant film role was as Richard Rich in A Man for All Seasons, Fred Zinneman's biopic of Thomas More, based on the play by Robert Bolt.

While the part of Rich was not a major one, the success of the film - it won six Oscars - pushed him into the spotlight.

Five years later he was nominated for a Bafta, as Timothy Evans in 10 Rillington Place, the true story of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

Colourful

Evans, wrongly hanged for the murder of his daughter, was the sort of vulnerable character that would become something of a speciality for Hurt.

For a time he gained something of a reputation as one of acting's hellraisers, mixing with Peter O'Toole and Richard Harris.

He finally won a Bafta in 1975 for his portrayal of Quentin Crisp, in The Naked Civil Servant, an ITV adaptation of Crisp's autobiography,

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Image captionHurt starred with Brad Davis in the harrowing film Midnight Express

His depiction of the colourful Crisp, who flaunted his homosexuality at a time when gay sex between men was illegal, won much praise.

"It changed the business's perception of me as a performer," he later said. "I was warned not to do it - they said you'll never work again, it was such a dodgy subject at the time."

Crisp himself expressed delight at Hurt's performance. "I told Mr Hurt it was difficult for actors to play victims, but he has specialised in victims."

He went on to reprise the role in 2009 in a dramatisation of Crisp's second autobiography, An Englishman in New York.

Scariest moments

Other impressive performances followed. He played the tyrannical Roman emperor Caligula in the BBC adaptation of I, Claudius.

And in 1978 he narrowly missed out on an Oscar for his role as heroin addict Max in Alan Parker's controversial film, Midnight Express.

A year later he played a crew member in Alien, becoming a host for the eponymous creature.

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Image captionHe made a speciality of playing victims like Timothy Evans in 10 Rillington Place

The scene where the tiny creature bursts out of his chest has often topped the polls of the scariest moments in film.

In what many consider his greatest role, he played the hideously deformed Joseph Merrick in the film The Elephant Man.

Wearing prosthetic make-up that took eight hours to apply, Hurt excelled in the heartbreaking role of an intelligent man imprisoned in a body that repelled other people.

"Merrick was made into a freak," Hurt said. "A lot of my career is tied up with victims, people who are ostracised."

Convincing

Tragedy struck in 1983 when his partner of 16 years, Marie-Lise Volpeliere-Pierrot, died after a horse-riding accident.

The following year, Hurt married American actress Donna Peacock.

That year Hurt again played a victim, this time Winston Smith in a film adaptation of George Orwell's 1984.

Critics were almost unanimous in their praise, with Roger Ebert declaring: "John Hurt, with his scrawny body and lined and weary face, makes the perfect Winston Smith."

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Image captionHurt excelled in the role of Joseph Merrick

Over the following decades Hurt's workload remained prodigious, although he played fewer leading roles.

He was a convincing Alan Clark in a BBC adaptation of the philandering politician's diaries, and a memorable Control in the film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

His distinctive voice, "alternately honey and acid and sometimes a mixture of the two", as one critic put it, was much in demand.

Among the characters he voiced were the rabbit, Hazel, in Watership Down, and the Great Dragon in the BBC children's programme Merlin.

Memorable performances

In 2013 he appeared in Doctor Who as the War Doctor, a hitherto unseen incarnation of the character.

Hurt's career saw him appear in more than 120 films as well as numerous stage and television roles. He was as much at home in the theatre as he was in front of a camera.

Image captionHe was menacing as the War Doctor

While many of his contemporaries picked and chose the roles they would play, Hurt cheerfully took anything that came along, no matter how small.

The film critic and historian Geoff Andrew asked Hurt how he managed to regularly turn in such memorable performances.

"The only way I can describe it is that I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine.

"How that process happens, I'm sorry to tell you I can't describe."

Hurt is survived by his two sons and his fourth wife, of 12 years, Anwen Rees-Myers, a former actress and classical pianist.