Great Lives

The singer left the most famous soul label in music history almost as quickly as she’d arrived

She witnessed extreme horror. The photographs she took and the words she wrote both made and broke her

The German-American went from a sniper to an academic with a reputation for sexual frankness

Very few people have ever been famous the way Armstrong was. He released music almost every year from 1923 to 1970, selling four million records

It’s hard to convey just how big a deal Dunlop was to his fans, and to the people of his homeland. His modesty elevated the level of affection tenfold

The writer shared a deep, collaborative friendship with his kindred spirit Adolfo Bioy Casares, who became his literary double

His life took him from the blood-stained cellars of Texas to a place in the sporting pantheon

The modest aristocrat was perhaps aware that she wasn’t the only woman who went the extra mile in the jungles of Indochina

The Japanese invasion of China, the D-day landings, the founding of Israel – no war was too small for Capa, no battlefield too bloody

Mocked for speaking English with a Clouseau-esque accent, Lufbery’s time in American fatigues saw him become a wartime legend

A force of nature, Barclay was a boulevardier who made music and love with equal enthusiasm

However his works might have been assembled and whatever dissembling he did when talking about his life, Jerzy Kosiński was a master storyteller

A serious artist, the Austrian actress made the fatal mistake of failing to live up to something she had never been in the first place

That he remained upbeat despite his many misfortunes was amazing. That he managed to make his home country laugh for over half a century borders on the miraculous

In common with so many of the great pioneers, the inventor could add to his own gifts the blessing of a truly formidable spouse

He was one half of Milli Vanilli. So was he a failure, a fraud – or an extraordinary success?

The Frenchman always stressed that he was a writer of science fact, not science fiction

It was while the 22-year-old Germaine Lefebvre was walking down a Parisian street that her life was forever changed

Like Stanley Kubrick, his gift was to imagine and then realise the unimaginable, the unrealisable – places you could never go

‘Pippo’ soared to fame alongside Maria Callas in the 1950s but his playboy lifestyle ultimately led to the loss of his golden voice

At a time when cyclists had begun to resemble machines, Pantani was almost impossibly human, unable to conceal his emotions

Her career as one of the world’s leading operatic sopranos often came second to gushing entreaties to her ravishing appearance

One chance encounter transforming a life is rare enough. Guilbert enjoyed two a few days apart

Little blame can be attached to André Roussimoff for exaggerating the truth of his stories because everything about the wrestler and actor was already exaggerated

The footballer was the toast of the Viennese coffee houses, the intelligence of his play being praised in the same terms as poets

Many directors might not have scaled their creative heights without Ponti’s recognition that one could make daring and challenging cinema and still turn a profit

The daughter of a songwriter and from a long line of composers, the woman born Isabelle Gall was predestined for a career in music

There were huge advantages to being outside the Soviet Union, but the filmmaker's love of Russia bound him to home

For a woman who never desired the limelight, Silvana Mangano achieved cinematic immortality almost in spite of herself

The intensity he displayed in the saddle was an extension of his personality. He was spiky, surly and could bear a spectacular grudge

An adventurous romantic life lent almost a Zelig-like quality to the writer, constantly drawing her towards the centre of events

Her young daughters grieving before a grave she didn’t occupy was not even the worst tribulation to afflict the life of the Hungarian