Sean Connery has Died

 

He wasn't just Bond, of course. 

He starred in some of my favourite films, including Robin and Marion, The Name of the Rose, and The Man Who Would be King with Michael Caine. 

He was Spanish in Highlander, Irish-American in The Untouchables, and Russian in The Hunt for Red October (and he'd been Russian before, in Anna Karenina for the BBC).    

He was Indiana Jones' dad. 

He sang in Darby O'Gill and the Little People. 

He wore high boots and a red loincloth (and not a lot else) in Zardoz.

He had a fight on the roof of a steam train carriage in The First Great Train Robbery.

He was a cop in space in Outland, a prisoner in a military prison in The Hill, and a truck driver in The Hell Drivers.

That's quite a range for an actor who will mostly be remembered as James Bond.

Jill Paton Walsh has Died

 I first knew about Jill Paton Walsh through her children's books, especially A Parcel of Patterns, which is about the village of Eyam that sealed itself off to stop the spread of the plague (quite a topical subject now).  Another I enjoyed was Fireweed, set during the Second World War.

She also wrote detective novels with the main character of Imogen Quy, so she had experience in the detective fiction genre when she came to continue the Lord Peter Wimsey series of novels, from the notes that Dorothy L Sayers had left.  Opinion in Sayers fandom is divided on these, but I enjoyed them, even if some people do see them as a form of fan fiction.

She was 83.