June Brown
June Brown was on TV screens as chain-smoking, hypochondriac laundrette worker Dot Cotton for 35 years. As one of the most beloved characters in Eastenders, she worked closely with John Bardon who played Jim Branning, who Dot married, and with ‘Nasty Nick’ Cotton, her criminal son played by John Altman.
She was nominated for a BAFTA for her performance in a 2008 half-hour episode in which her character looked back on her life, and actors from Eastenders led the tributes when June Brown died at the age of 95.
Christine McVie
British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac was founded in 1967 and sold more than 100 million records, including tracks such as Go Your Own Way and Dreams, but it wasn’t always realised that singer-songwriter-keyboardist Christine McVie wrote some of the band’s most famous tracks, including Songbird, Everywhere, Little Lies and Don’t Stop.
The band’s best-selling album Rumours featured four of her songs, and she co-wrote the album’s The Chain, familiar as the theme to the BBC TV Formula One racing coverage from the late 1970s.
Bandmate Stevie Nicks led the tributes following McVie’s death after a short illness at the age of 79, saying she had lost her “best friend in the whole world”.
Dame Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood came to fame in the 1970s when she brought punk fashion into the mainstream, running the boutique SEX on London’s King’s Road with Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren.
She went on to establish a more respectable global fashion brand which now has stores in the UK, Europe, the USA and Asia.
She died on 29th December in Clapham, surround by her family, with her company tweeting: “Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. The world needs people like Vivienne to make a change for the better.” Her husband and creative partner Andreas Kronthaler said: “I will continue with Vivienne in my heart.”
Queen Elizabeth
The longest-reigning monarch in British history and the world’s oldest head of state, Queen Elizabeth II was born on 21 April 1926, and following the death of her father King George VI, became Queen in 1952 at the age of 25. As the head of the Commonwealth, commander-in-chief of the British armed forces, supreme governor of the Church of England, and patron of more than 600 charities and organisations, she was regarded as the bedrock of the British establishment. She had four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
After the death of her husband Prince Philip and celebrating her Platinum Jubilee, she took a reuced role in public life, and died at the age of 96 on Thursday 8th September, 2022.
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