Book of Obituaries Page 3

  But to most ordinary people the wealthy Kennedys and the outgoing Reagans seemed no different to earlier presidents: they were white and privileged, as are Bill Clinton and his once rival Bob Dole, an obvious WASP. Only Colin Powell, a black, would have broken the mould had he gone for the Republican nomination and won it, but he may have feared a white backlash. The Hispanics, the American Chinese and Japanese and dozens of other minorities are still locked out of the highest levels of power (as indeed are women, some of whose representatives are so indignant about white supremacy that they have rejected most of the world’s literature from Shakespeare onward as being by “dead

  white males”). Feminism never seems to have caught Mr Baltzell’s attention, but the danger of racism is a theme throughout his writings. His melancholy conclusion was that “complete chaos and violence” will ensue if the world becomes divided into two opposing racial camps.

  Sirimavo Bandaranaike

  Sirimavo Bandaranaike, a “first” among women, died on October 10th 2000, aged 84

  Fame came suddenly to Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka in 1960 when she was made the world’s first female prime minister. Newspapers around the world had gentle fun speculating about the auguries of this event. No one predicted that her reign would be remembered by many with loathing. The continuing conflict between the Tamils and the majority Sinhalese, which so far has claimed more than 60,000 lives, had its origin in policies Mrs Bandaranaike pursued.

  Historians may decide that Mrs Bandaranaike was an innocent, inheriting policies whose consequences she did not at first understand. That could be true. When she took over, Sri Lanka had been independent for 12 years, but the Buddhist Sinhalese felt that not enough had been done to restore the ascendancy of their pre-colonial “golden age”. Mrs

  Bandaranaike’s husband, Solomon, had become prime minister in 1956 promising to end privileges said to be enjoyed by the Tamils.

  Whether the mainly-Hindu Tamils had more privileges than the Sinhalese under the British, or were simply more enterprising, is open to question. But the Sinhalese believed they had and were resentful that many Tamils had prospered in government and the professions under colonial rule, and had held on to their jobs after independence. Solomon Bandaranaike was murdered in 1959 by a Buddhist monk who wanted Sinhala rule speeded up. Mrs Bandaranaike became leader of Solomon’s party. In a general election, the “weeping widow”, as she was known, was swept to victory.

  It does indeed seem that she may have started as a political innocent. Solomon was a male chauvinist. Whenever he invited some friends to their home to discuss political affairs, her only role was to serve tea. All the same, Mrs Bandaranaike had a sharp mind. She had received a solid education at a local Roman Catholic school and had done social work among the rural poor. And, once in office, she quickly learnt the power of racial politics.

  Sirimavo Bandaranaike headed two administrations, in 1960–65 and 1970–77. William McGowan, in his book Only Man Is Vile, quotes her as saying, “The Tamil people must accept the fact that the Sinhala majority will no longer permit themselves to be cheated of their rights.” She made Sinhala the sole official language, replacing English and ignoring Tamil. Sinhalese were favoured for university places and government jobs. School history books were rewritten to give prominence only to Sinhalese heroes.

  Her government nationalised the country’s main industries, and placed Sinhalese in charge. Even the tea estates, which were well run by Tamils, were turned over to Sinhalese control. The number of parliamentary seats Tamils could win was cut.

  It took a long time for the Tamils’ resentment to turn into civil war, and to a demand for their own state in the north-east of the island. It wasn’t just the racism; the government was a bad manager. There was high unemployment and soaring inflation. At one stage clothing and sugar were rationed. An insurrection, stirred by Marxist slogans and manned by the unemployed, was put down with great brutality.

  State-controlled newspapers sought to prop up Mrs Bandaranaike’s declining popularity with pictures of her with Tito, Nehru and others in the “non-aligned movement”, and she won their praises by expelling the American “peace corps” and closing the Israeli embassy. American aidwas cut off; Soviet aid came in. Eventually she lost power to Junius Jayewardene (see page 164), who reshaped Sri Lankan politics, transferring most power to the presidency. Mrs Bandaranaike was expelled from parliament and deprived of her civil rights for six years for abuse of office.

  These days, Sri Lanka is in some ways a different place. Many of the state industries have been privatised. But a Bandaranaike is back in power. The former prime minister’s daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, is president. For the past six years she has been trying to end the conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils ignited back in those reckless times nearly half a century ago; and now kept going by Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Tamil Tigers guerrilla group, who, says Mrs Kumaratunga, probably correctly, is mentally ill. Why so many Tamils are willing to be led by an apparent madman may perhaps be explained by their deep and unshifting suspicion of the Sinhalese, even though Mrs Kumaratunga has long rejected Sinhala nationalism.

  Mrs Kumaratunga was blinded in one eye last December when she was caught in the blast from a Tiger suicide bomber. Any time she leaves her presidential palace in Colombo, she takes the risk of another bomb attack. She has never publicly criticised her mother for her part in fomenting the Tamils’ grievances. She has always been the fond daughter, and made her mother prime minister, a position that became a ceremonial one under her presidency. Sirimavo Bandaranaike did undoubtedly believe that she was doing good. She gave the country its present Sinhalese name, changing it from Ceylon. It means “resplendent island”.

  Christiaan Barnard

  Christiaan Barnard, heart surgeon and celebrity, died on September 2nd 2001, aged 78

  It was a decent enough lifespan, 78 years, but Christiaan Barnard had, it seems, planned to live much longer. In his search for an elixir he injected himself with cells taken from the fetuses of animals. “It’s worth a try,” he said. Ageing, he maintained, was abnormal. He was involved with a clinic in Austria that offered “rejuvenation therapy”. He endorsed a skin cream that contained an ingredient said to have prolonged the lives of fruit flies but which was withdrawn from sale after customers complained that it was not working for them.

  At Dr Barnard’s lectures, for which he charged up to $10,000 a time, his listeners would sometimes become a little impatient when he dwelt at length on his experiences as a heart surgeon; they were keen to know what progress he was making on longevity. Heart transplants are no one’s idea of fun, but most people are interested in a few tips about how to put off the trip to heaven.

  Relax, take a holiday, put away your mobile phone, drink red wine. But that was not all, said the doctor, in case his listeners felt they were not getting their money’s worth. Sex, he said, was the magic ingredient, preferably with romance, “the most beautiful, healthiest and most pleasurable way” to keep fit. It cheered up the audience, even though the advice was not new. Dr Barnard had practised romantic sex ever since he had become famous after performing the world’s first human heart transplant in 1967.

  To the delight of newspapers, especially in America and Europe, the wonder surgeon was wonderfully photogenic, and had kept his boyish good looks into his 40s. He had a good line in chat too and seemed to love publicity. In the entertainment business women especially, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollabrigida and others, recognised a soulmate. Paris Match said he was one of the world’s great lovers. Our picture is of him with Grace Kelly in 1968. At the age of 42 he dumped his wife of 22 years and married a teenager. He was married once more. He had six children. “I have a woman in my life at all times,” he said. But although immortality by way of sex eluded Dr Barnard, there were compensations. As a heart surgeon he did memorable work, although even here there are reservations to be made.

  Christiaan Barnard learnt about heart surgery in the Un
ited States, chiefly at the University of Minnesota, after working for ten years mainly in general practice in his native South Africa. Whatever ambitions American surgeons may have had to replace a failing heart with a healthy one, the medical ethics prevailing at the time were against using the heart of someone who was brain dead while the heart was still functioning, albeit artificially. Back in South Africa Dr Barnard joined the heart department of Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and eventually headed a team of 30. “We didn’t have the legal restraints that existed in the United States,” he recalled. In 1967, after nine years of experiments, mainly on dogs, Dr Barnard and his team removed the heart from a young woman brain dead after a car accident and used it to replace the wonky heart of a 55-year-old grocer. The substitute heart started to beat vigorously and the

  operation was deemed a success. The patient died 18 days later of pneumonia. Large doses of drugs designed to prevent the heart being rejected had left him open to infection. Dr Barnard’s second transplant patient lived for 18 months after the operation. His longest-surviving patient lived with a substituted heart for 23 years.

  Dr Barnard carried out 75 transplants before giving up surgery in the 1980s because of arthritis. An estimated 100,000 heart transplant operations have so far been carried out in various countries. In the United States it is claimed that 75% of patients can expect to live for at least five years after the operation. What Dr Barnard did was to show the way. Other heart surgeons, suppressing their irritation about his love of fame, have been generous in their praise for his courage in confronting the question of brain death. Today it is accepted in many countries that brain dead means dead, although in Japan there were no heart transplant operations for 31 years after a surgeon who carried out the operation in 1968 was accused of murder. Many Japanese take the view that a person is alive while the heart is beating, and the country’s law on the subject of brain deathremains cloudy.

  Dr Barnard dismissed what he called the mystique of the heart. The object of desire in poetry since humans acquired words was simply a primitive pump. One of the doctor’s charms was his simple directness, perhaps acquired from his father, a missionary who drew big crowds as a preacher. Dr Barnard’s openness amused the glamorous, but it also made him respected in his own world in racial South Africa, where he had to make choices. They tended to be good ones. He campaigned for black doctors to have equal pay with whites. He employed non-white nurses to treat white patients. He operated on blacks and whites according to their needs. An American he operated on said he hoped he had been given a white heart. Dr Barnard said he could not say. You couldn’t tell the difference.

  Doak Barnett

  Arthur Doak Barnett, an American mandarin, died on March 17th 1999, aged 77

  In 1972 Richard Nixon sought to bring China back into the family of nations, as he put it. He went to Beijing, had a chat with Mao, and rekindled the difficult, but indispensable, relationship between America and China which is still evolving. Many people were surprised that Nixon of all people, an implacable opponent of communism, had broken the ice with China, which since its communist takeover in 1949 had been regarded as virtually an enemy of America. Doak Barnett was not at all surprised. For years he had sought to convince American politicians that eventually they would have to find a way to get on with the Chinese.

  He saw himself as an educator. Some pupils he dismissed as too thick to consider new ideas. Some, such as William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Relations Committee, were receptive, and the committee gave Mr Barnett a hearing when it reviewed the government’s China policy in 1966. Some, such as Lyndon Johnson, president of the United States from 1963 to 1969, had the power to reach out to China, but as a Democrat Johnson feared he would be seen as soft on a country that was helping North Vietnam in its war against the American-supported South.

  Richard Nixon, Johnson’s Republican successor as president, was never likely to be thought of as soft. “I always felt that Nixon was the guy, because of his background,” Doak Barnett recalled recently. In talks between Mr Barnett and his most promising pupil, Nixon responded enthusiastically to his idea of an American policy towards China “of containment but not isolation”, which he had first put to the Fulbright committee. Containment was America’s firm policy towards the Soviet Union; this new twist would demonstrate that America could be flexible, while remaining strong. Having protected his back in Washington, Nixon went off to Beijing, where, Time reported, he had a “glittering technical success”. It was Nixon’s finest hour, undiminished by his later fall. Mr Barnett was to whisper in the ears of the powerful for many years to come, but guiding America’s long march to China he regarded as his life’s main work.

  Doak Barnett was an American who seemed to have a touch of Scottish stubbornness: his unusual middle name, which he used as his first name, was a nod to his Scottish ancestry. China he thought of as a second home. He was born in Shanghai. His parents were Christian missionaries. When the family eventually returned to the United States Doak was 15. He went to Yale and during the second world war was in the Marines. He returned to China in 1949 as a newspaper correspondent and was in Beijing when the communists took over. Along with most Americans he was expelled in 1950 at the start of the Korean war. He got a job with the United States consulate in Hong Kong and was given grants by American universities for research. This was the start of a long career in which Mr Barnett became acknowledged as a leading authority on China. He stayed close to government, but kept his independence, most recently as a teacher at Johns Hopkins University.

  In one of his books, Uncertain Passage, Mr Barnett noted that Americans tended to shape their views of China “to fit their own preconceptions and mood of the moment, with minimal understanding of the realities of the situation”. Such views, he said in an earlier book, Communist China and Asia, partly arose from the “innumerable friendly ties, unique in their character, developed between the American and Chinese peoples” over a long period and ended by the communist takeover.

  Who lost China? The debate was conducted in America with some ferocity, with the Democrats, then in government, especially being blamed for not giving enough help to Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalists. Owen Lattimore, a China specialist who, like Mr Barnett, was a little in love with the country, was accused absurdly of masterminding American policy in favour of the communists. So getting Richard Nixon to Beijing was the most delicate of operations.

  The briefing that Nixon had before he set out was not all that different from the one given to Bill Clinton for his trip in 1998. America’s protection of Taiwan was

  China’s big worry, Nixon was told. Next was the threat of a resurgence of Japanese military power. The problem of a divided Korea was bound to arise. Nixon should assure the Chinese that America did not seek hegemony in Asia, and no doubt the Chinese would say the same.

  Add to the list human rights and trade worries, neither subject then deemed important, and what has changed? Isolation has long been over (although China believes it is still being contained). Most important, China is these days dealt with by America as a normally awkward country. A Clinton adviser recently popped into the hospital where Mr Barnett was receiving treatment. What should be done about China’s theft of America’s nuclear secrets? China’s overall policy, Doak Barnett reflected, was not to be a troublemaker. “Stay cool.”

  Syd Barrett

  Roger “Syd” Barrett, leader of Pink Floyd, died on July 7th 2006, aged 60

  TO THOSE who were young then, the late 1960s were the best thing since 1789. All that followed paled by comparison. This was the time of the Paris riots, with students hurling cobbles and the flics hurling tear-gas back; the first convulsions over the war in Vietnam; the Prague spring, quickly crushed by Soviet tanks; and everywhere the sense that the young, by sheer numbers, could overthrow the established order and make the world again.

  If they failed to remake it, this was largely because they were out of it on one illegal substance or another. For
many of them, the drug scene was a quick, soggy spliff behind the bike sheds, or a reverential division of a cake of greenish powder, washed down with a glass of Liebfraumilch and covered up with burning joss sticks. Yet at the highest levels of culture the new gods of rock music tripped on much more dangerous stuff, and sang about it. They did not find truth exactly, as much as yellow walruses, purple fields, kaleidoscopic skies and melting buildings, all of which were evoked in music and light shows so new and peculiar that the best way to appreciate them was by being prone and stoned yourself.

  Syd Barrett was the very exemplar of this wild universe. As the leader of Pink Floyd, the highly successful psychedelic band that he christened in 1965, he wrote and sang of “lime and limpid green”, of Dan Dare, of gingerbread men and, in the band’s first hit, “Arnold Layne”, of a transvestite who stole underwear from moonlit washing lines. His weird words and odd, simplistic melodies, sent through an echo-machine, seemed sometimes to be coming from outer space.

  Yet there was also something quintessentially English and middle class about Mr Barrett. His songs contained the essence of Cambridge, his home town: bicycles, golden robes, meadows and the river. Startlingly, he sang his hallucinations in the perfect, almost prissy enunciation of the Home Counties. He made it possible to do rock in English rather than American, inspiring David Bowie among others. The band’s first album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” (1967), made Mr Barrett central, plaintively calling up the new age from some distant and precarious place.