Great Lives

The fiercely ambitious businessman turned a family playing-card business into a global entertainment empire – by spotting talent and betting on the future

She parachuted into occupied France as an SOE radio operator. The statue of her in London was the first monument to an Asian woman anywhere in Britain

The actor poured his vulnerability into The Wire’s most celebrated character – with devastating consequences

He built a global philosophy of physical freedom – but demanded absolute commitment

Baseball’s biggest star was the subject of racist insults at a time when black players were banned from the game

Robert Altman’s Popeye was a disaster – until it wasn’t

The bandleader was drifting on a long US tour until he met an activist who redefined his purpose

The rapper turned politician gave young people a voice – so the military had to silence him

The former Liverpool hero and England manager, who has died, is remembered by The New World’s editor-in-chief

The martial arts star wrote down his philosophies and hopes as a means of enacting them

He appeared in some of the biggest TV and movies of our time, but being a Kiwi, he became a quiet kind of megastar

How a small Manhattan exhibition in 1938 helped launch one of the most celebrated artists of the modern age

His final goal captured everything fans loved about the man who called himself ‘a small guy from Gondomar’

His message of peace brought hope to the world - then war in Gaza played a part in his death

The cartoonish villain who turned to cocaine was once an Olympic-calibre wrestler who helped US athletes win gold

Violence silenced her, before she decided to tell the world about it

The singer had been living in quiet retirement – then one night changed everything

The Taxi star revelled in creating chaos and confusion

Once the world’s tallest mountain had been scaled, they all wanted to know: Who stepped on the summit first?

At Monaco 1984, the Brazilian announced himself as a legend – but a decade later, he was gone

PL Travers told Walt Disney to throw out the animation and that Julie Andrews was too pretty for the role

A performance in Japan meant the end of the Revolution – and began a new chapter in the life of an eccentric genius

The abstract painter wanted to make art like he was ‘rushing through a battlefield’ – so he started using his feet as brushes

The exiled writer/director knew that audiences really wanted empathy from Hollywood, not glamour

With her distinctive bold colours, grey curls and bright scarves, Saadawi became a feminist icon. Margaret Atwood called her ‘one of the great radical voices of our time’

Her remarkable wartime exploits – including a dramatic prison break – made her a legend of the French Resistance

His invention of the cassette tape revolutionised the way people listened to music – but he never patented it. 21st June 1926 – 6th March 2021

Flawed, flamboyant and freakishly gifted, Warne turned leg-spin into high art – and made every ball an event

How the creator of Peanuts created humour from loneliness and sadness

Her confrontation with Pakistan’s military rulers was rooted in a lifetime of activism that began in childhood and never wavered

How the widow of Martin Luther King Jr transformed mourning into a lifelong movement

Dismissed by friends and launched in an era when women lacked the vote, Ocampo’s Sur magazine became a defining force in 20th-century literature and politics