The people we said goodbye to in 2000

They delighted us, excited us, amused us and inspired us, and the world will be poorer for their passing.

SIRIMAVO BANDARANAIKE


The world's first female Prime Minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, died on October 10 after a 40-year political career in Sri Lanka. She was 84.

Her husband, Solomon Bandaranaike, defeated Ceylon's conservative first post-independence Government in 1956. With passionate backing from the island's Sinhalese majority, he replaced English with Sinhalese as the official language.

Mrs Bandaranaike, who succeeded her husband after he was assassinated in 1959, faced bitter opposition from the Tamil minority, who made up only 11 per cent of the population but held 33 per cent of civil service jobs.

She sent troops into Tamil-controlled northern Sri Lanka to quell resistance.

Mrs Bandaranaike lost the 1965 election, but returned as Prime Minister from 1970-77 and again, in what is now a presidential system, from 1994 until August this year.

She hosted a summit of the non-aligned movement in Colombo in 1976, but five years earlier had accepted military help from both the Soviet Union and the United States to crush a Maoist rebellion.

PIERRE TRUDEAU


Pierre Trudeau, who was Canadian Prime Minister from 1968 to 1984, died on September 29, aged 80.

A sharp, energetic figure, he wore sandals to Parliament, dated celebrities such as Barbra Streisand, flashed an obscene hand signal to protesters and once did a pirouette behind the Queen's back.

As Justice Minister in 1967, he liberalised abortion and homosexuality laws.

As Prime Minister, he made French an official language with English, promoted metrics and led the fight against Quebec separatists.

When he retired in 1984, journalist Gwynne Dyer credited him with holding the French and English-speaking parts of Canada together. "There might not now be a Canada without him."

CHARLES PERKINS


"Aboriginal gains degree," said a Herald headline in 1966. Charles Perkins, then aged 30, was the first Aboriginal university graduate.

He was already a campaigner for his people. Taken from his home tribe near Alice Springs to go to an Adelaide school at the age of 10, he saw himself as part of the Stolen Generation.

Inspired by black American civil rights campaigners, he led a "freedom ride" through New South Wales in 1965, speaking out against racism and breaking a ban on "darkies" being allowed into a public pool - giving some Aboriginal kids their first swim there, and causing a riot.

Mr Perkins became manager of the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs, then, under the Whitlam Government, Assistant Secretary of Aboriginal Affairs in Canberra. He was suspended from the job in 1974 when he said the Liberal and Country Parties were "the most racist in the world."

Bob Hawke's Labor Government made him Secretary of Aboriginal Affairs in 1984. But it sacked him in 1988 over a $300,000 grant to buy poker machines for an Aboriginal social club in Canberra.

He protested to the end. At the Corroborree 2000 in Sydney, he shouted at Prime Minister John Howard, urging him to "say sorry." He died on October 18, aged 64.

SUE RYDER


Sue Ryder spent a lifetime bringing relief to the survivors of Nazi concentration camps, and later to disabled people. She died in November, aged 77.

The daughter of a landowner in Suffolk, England, she helped to train resistance agents during the Second World War, mainly Poles and Czechs.

After the war, she transferred to a relief unit. When the unit was withdrawn in 1952, she carried on alone, setting up the Sue Ryder Trust for Forgotten Allies. She battled for residence permits, compensation, homes and hospitals.

In 1959, she married Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, a war hero who had also turned to organising help for concentration camp victims and other people with disabilities.

They formed the Ryder-Cheshire Foundation, which now has more than 200 homes for the disabled, including several in New Zealand.

HABIB BOURGUIBA


Tunisia's first President, Habib Bourguiba, died on April 6, almost 13 years after he was deposed by his country's Army on grounds of senility. He was 96.

Mr Bourguiba, who trained as a lawyer, was jailed for agitating against French colonial rule from 1934-36 and 1938-43, but was released during German occupation of France in the Second World War.

With French rule re-established after the war, he was jailed again from 1952-54, and was then allowed to go to France under surveillance.

He negotiated home rule, and returned to Tunisia to a hero's welcome from 300,000 people.

In 1957, the new Tunisian Parliament deposed the Bey (King) of Tunis and declared a republic, with Mr Bourguiba as the first President.

He closed French military bases and expropriated farms belonging to some big landowners.

But he otherwise followed a pro-Western policy, apart from a short-lived merger with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's Libya in 1974.

JOHN GIELGUD

John Gielgud, who died on May 21 aged 96, was described as "one of the great classical glories of the English stage." His acting career spanned 79 years.

He was born into a family of Lithuanian origin, which had been in Britain since the 1850s, and built his reputation as a Shakespearean actor, playing Romeo, Richard II, Hamlet and King Lear.

For many years he avoided film and television, but was finally drawn into the screen world in the 1970s and in 1980 starred in TV's Brideshead Revisited. He acted in the 1998 movie Elizabeth and in a recent production of Merlin for Britain's Channel 4.

In July, actor Ian McKellen disclosed that Sir John donated money for many years to the Stonewall gay rights campaign group, but never wanted this made public.

COLIN COWDREY


Michael Colin Cowdrey was born to cricket greatness when he was given the initials MCC. He captained England and scored 7624 runs in 114 tests. He died on December 5, aged 67.

As a batsman, he was fearless. In 1963, he played on to help England win a test despite his suffering a broken arm from a cricket ball. In 1974-75, when at 41 his best cricket days were far behind him, he was called on as a replacement on the fastest, bounciest pitch in Australia.

Cowdrey was a great friend of New Zealand in the British cricket fraternity after a fractious tour by the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1958-59. The Governor-General at the time, Lord Cobham, asked Cowdrey how the MCC's reputation in this country could be restored, leading to a much more successful tour in 1960-61.

LORETTA YOUNG


Loretta Young's screen career ranged from silent movies to television. She died on August 12, aged 87.

She got her first part as an extra in a crowd scene at the age of 4, in 1916. In her 20s she sometimes appeared in as many as 10 films in a year, such as Born to be Bad with Cary Grant (1934), The Call of the Wild with Clark Gable and Shanghai with Charles Boyer (both 1935).

In the 1950s and early 1960s she had her own Loretta Young Show on television, in which she made fun of her own iconic status with a grand entrance each week in a sweeping movie-star gown.

CHARLES SCHULZ


The creator of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy and the rest of the Peanuts gang, Charles Schulz, died on February 12, aged 77.

Schulz never let anybody else draw the comic strip, which he started in October 1950. By its end, it was running in 21 languages in 2600 newspapers in 75 countries.

An exhibition created for the strip's 40th birthday in 1990 traced Snoopy's evolution. In 1958, he began to walk on his hind legs. In 1966, he made his first appearance with flying cap and goggles as Snoopy the aviator. In 1969, the vehicle that landed the first men on the moon was affectionately called "Snoopy."

"This dog is a loser," said the exhibition catalogue.

"He compensates for all his failures with extreme mythomania which enables him to wallow in a delightful world where he is No 1 - First World War flying ace, astronaut, champion ice skater, foreign legionnaire ... His personality is that of a big child."

BARBARA CARTLAND


With 723 books to her name, Barbara Cartland was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most prolific writer of all time. She died on May 21, aged 98.

She wrote her first romance when she was 21, and for many years pumped out one a fortnight, dictated from a pink chaise longue.

Dame Barbara espoused a world where a woman did not allow a man to kiss her until he had proposed, a fantasy world of blushing virgins and muscular, but sensitive, men.

She was a Conservative councillor in Hertfordshire and a campaigner for gypsies to be allowed permanent sites so their children could be educated. Hertfordshire's first gypsy camp was dubbed "Barbaraville."

In 1991, she said she wanted to be remembered for her novels, which she hoped gave "beauty and love to the world."

NOTED


ARTS


Gisele Freund, whose photographs captured the attitudes of Paris' Left Bank writers; Victor Borge, comic pianist known as the clown prince of Denmark.

BUSINESS


Eric Morley, British millionaire who founded Miss World pageant. Harry Oppenheimer, South African who led the world's largest diamond and gold mining companies.

ENTERTAINMENT


Douglas Fairbanks jun, actor, producer and author. Alec Guinness, actor whose roles ranged from Hamlet to Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. Nancy Marchand, who played power woman roles in Lou Grant and The Sopranos. Walter Matthau, who won an Oscar for The Fortune Cookie. Claire Trevor, who won an Academy Award for her 1948 performance in Key Largo. Roger Vadim, French film director.

LITERATURE


Gwendolyn Brooks, who won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Alex Comfort, author of The Joy of Sex. Anthony Powell, author of A Dance to the Music of Time.

POLITICS


Hafez al-Assad, Syrian President since 1971. Bettino Craxi, Italy's longest-service postwar Prime Minister. Solomon Mamaloni, former Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands. Alfred Nzo, South Africa's first post-apartheid Foreign Minister. Keizo Obuchi, Japanese Prime Minister 1998-2000. Noboru Takeshita, Japanese Prime Minister 1987-89. Pham Van Dong, Prime Minister of North Vietnam 1955-76 and of Vietnam 1981-86.

RELIGION


Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury 1974-80. Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1980-91.

SCIENCE


Mark Oliphant, Australian physicist who helped lay the foundations for the A-bomb.

Herald Online features:

2000 - Year in Review

2000 - Month by month

2000 - The obituaries