Psychoanalyst and art therapist hailed for her bestselling 2015 book Boarding School Syndrome

The Jungian psychoanalyst and art psychotherapist Joy Schaverien, who has died aged 82, will be remembered beyond her professional world for her book Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the “Privileged” Child (2015).

It became a bestseller for the publisher Routledge: among its readers were adult boarding school survivors who found that it described accurately the traumatic experiences some of them had had when sent away to school, particularly at an early age.

Actor, playwright and screenwriter who was a stalwart of the National Theatre under Laurence Olivier

The actor and writer Gawn Grainger, who has died aged 87, had an extraordinary career that spanned more than 70 years. Even if rarely the star, he had the resilience and versatility of the born character actor and was the product of a now vanished regional repertory system. Above all, he was an indispensable team player and a pillar, along with Michael Bryant, of the National Theatre.

He began his career there under Laurence Olivier in 1972 when the company was situated at the Old Vic and worked under successive directors before making his final appearance in 2017 during the tenure of Rufus Norris. He worked regularly in the West End and in TV, and in the 1980s sidelined his acting career to focus on writing scripts for the small screen. He soon returned to the stage, however, which was his natural habitat.

Actor who played Norm Peterson in the hugely popular American sitcom Cheers

George Wendt, who has died aged 76, made his name in the American sitcom Cheers as the popular, beer-guzzling Norm Peterson. He appeared in all 275 episodes of the series, which ran from 1982 to 1993, starred Ted Danson as the Cheers bar owner, Sam Malone, and gained a worldwide following.

His character’s arrival was a running gag. He would swing through the doors, bidding the regulars a good evening (or afternoon), and they would yell back in unison: “Norm!” It chimed with the lyrics from the programme’s theme song: “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.”

American film director best known for Glengarry Glen Ross and At Close Range

The film director James Foley, who has died from brain cancer aged 71, was a self-effacing and shrewd stylist whose camerawork always served the actors and the psychology of the characters. This thespian focus was best showcased in his 1992 adaptation of David Mamet’s stage play Glengarry Glen Ross; its heavyweight cast, which included Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey, might have overwhelmed a less purposeful supervisor.

But in his hands this dissection of American capitalism, set in a beleaguered real-estate office, became an actors’ masterclass; the cast would turn up on their days off to watch each other work. Foley had been convinced to direct it by a new version of Mamet’s script that broke down what on stage had been cerebral monologues into pithy, visceral repartee. Accordingly, the director insisted on casting “great actors, people with movie charisma, to give it watchability, especially since the locations were so restricted”.

Violin expert and international stringed instrument dealer who worked with Yehudi Menuhin and Jacqueline du Pré

Charles Beare, who has died aged 87, was an international stringed instrument expert and dealer, his name synonymous with an unrivalled knowledge of fine instruments and bows. His expertise was unmatched in the arcane world of violin authentication.

Once seen, an instrument corner, an f-hole, or glimpse of a scroll would often be enough to enable recognition in Beare’s uncanny eidetic memory. He did not need measurements to be able to identify an instrument or bow. “The only way in which you can learn is by seeing instruments with original labels and if people hadn’t taken so many of them out it would be a lot easier,” Beare recalled in an interview.

Choreographer and artistic director of the Bolshoi who was a major influence on the development of ballet in the Soviet Union

Yuri Grigorovich, who has died aged 98, was one of the most important choreographers of the Soviet era. As chief choreographer and artistic director of the Bolshoi ballet company for some 30 years, he was a major influence on the development of ballet in the Soviet Union and to an even greater extent on its perception in the outside world.

Grigorovich’s first choreographies were welcomed by Soviet critics as a move away from the old drambalet style, which emphasised character dancing, large casts and striking stage effects with little use of classical technique, to a new form which relied purely on dance to indicate character and develop the story.

Journalist whose dogged reporting of grooming gangs in the north of England led to a public inquiry and changes in the law

The award-winning reporter Andrew Norfolk had only just retired from the Times when he agreed to appear on one of its podcasts, The Story, to talk about Elon Musk, the businessman and adviser to the US president, at the start of this year. “This wasn’t how I intended to spend my 60th birthday,” he said.

Not only did Norfolk, who has died suddenly, refuse to promote his work on social media – he spent only two weeks on Twitter in 2010 as part of a deal to watch the World Cup final in South Africa – but his dogged, forensic reporting was in so many ways the antithesis to Musk’s inflammatory online commentary.

Political activist who oversaw an attempt by the Militant tendency to take control of the Labour party

In the 1980s, Peter Taaffe, who has died aged 83, was famous in political circles, and Labour party grandees shivered at the sound of his name.

As leader since 1964 of the Militant tendency, which, unlike other Trotskyist groups, wanted to work within the Labour party, Taaffe had spent two decades shaping and implementing a policy of “entryism”, in which Militant members were to take over the party from the ground up.

Character actor nominated for a Bafta for Edge of Darkness who played another CIA spook in two Bond films

Although Joe Don Baker, who has died aged 89, was one of Hollywood’s most accomplished character actors, he came to prominence as a star in the wildly successful B movie Walking Tall (1973). He played Buford Pusser, a former wrestler who returns home to Tennessee and, armed with a baseball bat, battles the Dixie mafia who have taken control of his town. Directed on the cheap by Phil Karlson, the $500,000 film grossed over $40m. “It touched a vigilante nerve in everyone who would like to do in the bad guys but doesn’t have the power,” Baker explained in a 1991 interview.

Tall and powerfully built, Baker had a broad smile and Texas drawl that could convey an aura of menace, but also suggested sharp intelligence, something that served him well in what may have been his best role, as the flamboyant CIA agent Darius Jedburgh in the TV miniseries Edge of Darkness (1985), for which he was nominated for a Bafta as best actor; he lost to the series’ star Bob Peck. “I would have done that all my life … and been happy,” he said. The director, Martin Campbell, agreed, and a decade later cast him in the James Bond movie GoldenEye (1995), where he virtually reprised Jedburgh, as Jack Wade, in brilliant contrast to Pierce Brosnan’s Bond. He was Wade again in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and had already played a megalomaniacal Bond villain in The Living Daylights (1987).

My friend John Froude, who has died aged 80, was an infectious disease physician and worked all over the world. He died from complications of a stroke sustained last autumn.

After resident medical posts at Orpington, the London and the National Heart hospitals in London, he went to Nigeria in 1973, and continued working in Africa, in Zimbabwe and Uganda, and the Middle East before settling in New York, where he obtained a position at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan in the 1980s, when the Aids epidemic was starting.

My father, Michael Allaby, who has died aged 91, was an influential figure in the development of green philosophy. Co-author with Edward Goldsmith of the key ecological text A Blueprint for Survival in 1972, he later also collaborated with James Lovelock, with whom he had an enduring friendship.

Michael wrote an astonishing number of books on the environmental sciences – more than 100 in total. At the heart of his work was a firm belief that scientific objectivity is key to the survival of humanity.

My mother, Dorli Meek, who has died aged 98, arrived in Britain as a refugee from Nazi Germany aged 12. Although she had been baptised, under the Nazi regime three Jewish grandparents meant that she was Jewish.

At school in Berlin she was subjected to racial purity tests. An SS officer visited the school, seeking girls to stand as an honour guard for Adolf Hitler. Dorli was selected – she had blond plaits and blue eyes – and although her teacher said that she was not Aryan, it made no difference. Swastika hair ribbons were issued. After Kristallnacht, Dorli was expelled.

My friend and colleague, Eric Macfarlane, who has died aged 93, was an inspiring and influential educationist. His own experience of school had sometimes been frustrating and difficult; reflecting on those years, he concluded that the purported excellence of some grammar school teaching had left far too many with a sense of inadequacy.

When Eric, aged 35, was appointed head of Letchworth grammar school, Hertfordshire, he wanted to encourage radical curricular alternatives. His key priorities were teamwork, use of the imagination, getting rid of streaming and participatory learning.

My friend Elizabeth Herridge, who has died aged 77 of motor neurone disease, accompanied her husband as a “diplomatic wife” for many years, enjoying the pleasures, trials and tribulations of postings including Prague, Nairobi and Lagos, and Chennai in south India.

It was while in Chennai, between 1999 and 2003, that Elizabeth’s interest in healthcare and her strong desire to help others resulted in a project that changed the lives of many disabled children and adults.

My brother Richard Goodman, who has died aged 87, played a leading role in introducing New Zealand wine to Britain, beginning in the early 1980s.

At that time, New Zealand wine was practically unobtainable in the UK and was certainly not to be found on supermarket shelves. Today, it is top of the league table in Britain in terms of sales of white wines by value.

In 1969 I was the first British student to go on exchange to the University of the West Indies, and had a three-month attachment with sickle-cell disease researchers Graham Serjeant and his wife, Beryl, in Jamaica. Graham immediately told me that the textbooks describing what many patients called “sick-as-hell disease” were all wrong.

He and Beryl had quickly realised that with proper care, support and attention to detail, these patients could live far better and longer lives than had been thought possible. Doing clinics with Graham all across Jamaica in a battered VW van was such an education - likewise dancing the night away to ska and blue beat under the starry Jamaican skies.

Bill Ashton, the founder of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, was pivotal in my life – and in the lives of so many musicians.

At the age of 18, I used to get up at 6am every Saturday and catch the train from Leicester to London, just to attend his rehearsals at the Cockpit theatre. You never knew who would be there: one week, you might find yourself learning from a dozen of the country’s best saxophonists; the next, you could be leading the sax section yourself.

I spent most of 1977 as an “apprentice image maker”, conceiving and producing figurative sculptures for the company Welfare State. It was led by John Fox, his wife, Sue Gill, and Boris and Maggy Howarth. Bob Frith guided the apprentices, and the Mexican printmaker José Posada was a huge influence.

As stage hands we dressed as iconic figures. During shows I brought in large sculptures in drag as a Cosmic Midwife, and a fellow apprentice removed them as a Cosmic Undertaker. Everything was done on a viscerally impressionistic, generous and dramatic scale. We also learned to play instruments, carry massive sculptures in processions and work with fire.

In 1983 I engaged Philip Lowrie for a season of plays at Nottingham Playhouse. I knew something of his work in regional theatre but nothing of his time in Coronation Street; the stage seemed to be his natural home.

In his year spent at the Playhouse his wide variety of parts included James Morell in Shaw’s Candida, the Chaplain in Brecht’s Mother Courage with Miriam Karlin and, most notably, a Scots Aufidius in Coriolanus.

Influential football writer and novelist hailed as a doyen of sports journalism during his seven-decade career

Brian Glanville, who has died aged 93, was a football writer of unique stature and a figure of extraordinary industry in papers and publishing for nearly seven decades.

For 33 years he was the football correspondent of the Sunday Times, with whom he continued to work until he was 88. He produced thousands of match reports and features and was a pioneer in giving greater coverage to the international game, attending all World Cups from 1958 to 2006 and using his gift for languages – he spoke Italian almost perfectly, as well as French and Spanish — to write for other newspapers, magazines and agencies across the world. His fellow sports journalist Patrick Barclay once remarked that “most football writers fall into two categories: those who have been influenced by Brian Glanville and those who should have been”.

Guardian crime correspondent admired for his determined and scrupulously fair reporting of wrongdoing, including miscarriages of justice

The journalist, author and broadcaster Duncan Campbell, who has died aged 80 from lymphoma, was the most respected crime correspondent of his generation. The determined, scrupulously fair way he pursued evidence of wrongdoing, including miscarriages of justice by the police and prosecuting authorities, was widely admired. It reflected a tolerance and respect for people from all sorts of backgrounds, qualities enriched by an extraordinary life of travel and experiences that gave him rare insights into human behaviour, prejudices and beliefs.

The world of crime never ceased to fascinate him. He earned the trust of criminals and senior police officers alike, establishing an astonishing network of contacts. The former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger described how Duncan “moved effortlessly between the lawyers, the cops and the villains. When he threw parties a great game was to try and gauge which was which. A retired bank robber would be rubbing shoulders with a judge next door to a chief constable. I can’t think of any other crime reporter who could bring that off.”

Cameroon-born art curator appointed last year as the director of the 2026 Venice Biennale

At a conference held at London’s Somerset House as part of the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in 2015, the name of the organiser came up again and again. “Koyo Kouoh,” hooted an Iranian participant to her eager audience. “We need to have her cloned.”

Over the decade that followed, it seemed as though this might actually have happened. Kouoh, who has died aged 57 after being diagnosed with cancer, was impossibly ubiquitous. In 2015, she was living and working in Dakar, Senegal, where in 2008 she had set up an artists’ residency called Raw Material. Seven years later, Raw Material had come to include a gallery, exhibition space and a mentoring programme for young Senegalese artists.

Leader of the Catholic church who pushed for social and economic justice, and an urgent response to the climate crisis

The election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope in March 2013 was unexpected, even to the then cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires himself. He may have come a distant second in the previous papal conclave in 2005, but at 76 and, following the resignation on the grounds of old age of the candidate who had come first back then, the 85-year-old Benedict XVI – Bergoglio was convinced that a younger man was needed.

However, the majority of cardinals who gathered in the Sistine Chapel to vote were looking for something more than (relative) youth. Top of their agenda as they assembled was openness to fresh thinking after 35 years of no change under the almost seamless reigns of Pope John Paul II and Benedict, his erstwhile right-hand man. And so they surprised everyone by opting for Catholicism’s first Jesuit pope, the first Latin American successor to Saint Peter, and first leader from outside Europe in over a millennium.

Prolific novelist and short-story writer with a taste for the absurd

The prolific novelist, short-story writer and children’s author Jane Gardam, who has died aged 96, had a taste for the absurd and an extraordinary facility for characterisation and social comedy. Accused once of being a “muslin and tea party writer”, she shot back: “I’m more hair-cloth and gin.” It was a remark that deftly summarised two features of her work: religion and the more subversive side of middle-class life.

Gardam’s commitment to literary experimentation was evident from early on. She hated the idea of writing as a genteel occupation, and set out to challenge both herself and her readers. She did this partly in terms of form: Crusoe’s Daughter (1985) ends with a playlet; The Queen of the Tambourine (1991) is epistolary; the denouement of Faith Fox (1996) features the prayers muttered in church by various characters. Her much praised short-story collection Missing the Midnight (1997) explores the many permutations of the ghost story.

Actor and co-creator of the classic 1970s television series Upstairs, Downstairs

Jean Marsh, who has died aged 90, created the classic 1970s television series Upstairs, Downstairs with her friend and fellow actor Dame Eileen Atkins. As well as co-writing the series, Marsh played the part of Rose Buck, a parlour maid, who became something of a sex symbol in the early 70s and returned as the housekeeper when the series was revived nearly four decades later.

The period drama, “the everyday story of Edwardian folk”, as the Guardian described it at the time, followed the intertwined lives of the upper-class Bellamy family and their servants, at 165 Eaton Place in Belgravia, London. Set between 1903 and 1930, the series documented a period of immense social change.

Star of films such as Top Gun, The Doors and Batman Forever whose acting could combine playfulness and intensity

Temperamental on-set behaviour by successful actors is common, but rarely made public. So it takes a particular type of performer, or one with poor PR defences, to become notorious for tantrums or capriciousness. The actor Val Kilmer, who has died aged 65 after suffering from pneumonia, was one such case.

He starred in several box-office hits, including Top Gun (1986), and played roles as distinctive as Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991) and the ghost of Elvis Presley in True Romance (1993). He also got a fleeting taste of superstardom when he took the lead in Batman Forever (1995).

Author of the Crongton novels whose stories of inner-city life give a realistic portrait of growing up in contemporary Britain

Best known as the author of the Crongton series of young adult novels, Alex Wheatle, who has died aged 62 of prostate cancer, was a writer, speaker and activist whose well-observed stories based on his own life gave a painful and vivid picture of his tough early years and adolescence in south London.

His experiences, of growing up in an abusive care system, police brutality and a spell in prison, shaped Alex’s worldview and he wanted others to know about them; his passion and anger were tempered but never dulled by his subsequent success as a writer. Known as the Brixton Bard, he wrote fiercely but with understanding, energy and humour in a series of adult novels, starting with Brixton Rock (1999), before switching to young adult (YA) fiction.