Nesta Roberts

[kalypso_v]

Last night I had the long-expected call to tell me that Nesta Roberts had died.

Comments

[matildabj]

A really lovely eulogy. You know and have known so many incredibly interesting people and I love learning about them this way, from your personal experience.

[jhall1]

That's a wonderful piece. Thank you for posting it. Your obituaries are so good, that it's a pity that they don't reach a wider audience. (I'm assuming that here is the only place that they appear, which could be wrong I suppose.)

She was the obvious person to give the address at my father's funeral; I am not sure who is left to speak at hers.

They should ask you to do it, since based on what you've written about her you are almost certainly better qualified to do so than anyone else (unless by any chance you are petrified by the thought of public speaking).

[kalypso_v]

It ought to be someone from The Guardian who can do justice to her career, but there are very few of that generation left. If not... I wonder if my brother might manage it. He's an unexpectedly good speaker, and has known her all his life. But I think, like me, he'd want an old hand from The Guardian. My mother was trying to reach one of them, who might have ideas.

[glitterboy1]

The people you've known, and the stories you tell of them... I love to read them; I'm just sorry that the circumstances are not better.

Whoever does the address, I hope that they will speak with as much knowledge and compassion as you always bring to these pieces. Her world shrank and her story is finished, but she's there in the influences and connections that she's left, in your memories, and now in ours, too.

[kalypso_v]

I've just been talking to the Guardian obituaries desk - they've got an obit from Geoffrey Taylor which they hope to run tomorrow, or soon after (depending on who else goes over the weekend).

[pinkdormouse]

An impressiv life indeed.