When I was a teenager in the early 1980s I think my first encounter with the name Nelson Mandela was probably through a badge. Although my memory is a little fuzzy about exactly when, it was most likely 1983, the year before the Special AKA band released what is still in most Top 20 Political Songs lists – Free Nelson Mandela. The song made it in to the top ten in the UK hit parade. The badge, though, with its typically 80s font, was ubiquitous. Image Credit Flickr User Ben Sutherland
As well as being worn to protest the on-going incarceration of the South African politician by his own government, the badge was also another way for us to show our displeasure with our own: Maggie Thatcher and her cohorts were currently smashing their way through UK industry like a wrecking ball. The only pictures we got to see of Nelson Mandela were those taken before his trial and imprisonment – and that had been in 1962, over twenty years previously. The man could already be representative of causes other than his own – a kind of marker of general political and personal duty: this transference from individual to universal symbol is something that few others have achieved. Image Credit Flickr User Vilseskogen
The potency of this charisma was bound to find outlets through artistic expression both of the monumental and the personal kind. After his release and his inevitable rise to political power, Mandela’s face became (and I do not use the word without hesitation) iconographic, even in life. He became a living, breathing symbol of the struggle for personal liberty, for freedom of speech, for universal education and suffrage – and more: I could probably leave a space here and each of you could fill in the gap with your own reason for admiring this man, surely one of the most pivotal in contemporary world history.
April 22 2013 would have seen the one hundred and fourth birthday of a remarkable woman. Born in 1909 and the oldest living recipient of a Nobel award, she worked past her centenary and put her remarkable longevity down to her own discovery – NGF (Nerve Growth Factor).
So astonishing was her vitality beyond her hundredth year that many asked the question – did this woman have the secret of eternal life? On 30 December 2012 Levi-Montalcini departed this world so we know the answer to that particular question - but what times she had seen...and made. Here is a glimpse in to the life of one of the most astonishingly gifted people of her time, Rita Levi-Montalcini
As a Jewish European woman her own life took many dramatic turns in the times of Hitler and Mussolini - and beyond.
It was a life which, if depicted in a movie, would have many people incredulous that the makers would think they could get away with something quite so unbelievable.
Pete Postlethwaite, the British actor, died yesterday aged 64. He was known for a huge variety of roles on stage, television and cinema, but success (in terms of global fame) came late in life for him. For years he made appearances in small parts on British television, such as the police action drama The Professionals but his natural and original acting home was the theatre where he was a stalwart for the Liverpool Everyman Theatre as well as the Royal Shakespeare Company.
An unashamed smoker, he died peacefully in his sleep in a hospital in the English county of Shropshire after a lengthy battle with cancer. This is near Bishop's Castle where he and his wife Jackie (a former producer at the BBC) have had their home for many years. They have two children.
On his last television interview Postlethwaite praised the staff at the hospital for their wonderful support through his illness.
Postlethwaite was born in Warrington, Cheshire and originally trained as a teacher. He taught drama at a college in Manchester before training as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic School. Like many young character actors in the 1970s he started his career at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. Among his contemporaries there were Anthony Sher, Jonathan Pryce, Bill Nighy and Julie Walters (with whom Postlethwaite had a relationship in the late 1970s). He went on to appear in many productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
His first screen success was in the film Distant Voices, Still Lives which was released in 1988. Here he played the part of the father of a family shown during the Second World War in the 1940s and its aftermath in the 1950s. He played a terrible monster, an alcoholic who abused his daughters in this film - one of the standout performance in the cinema of the 1980s.
He then became known to a global audience for his role in In the Name of the Father, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.
Again in this film he played the role of the father, Giuseppe Conlon, Giuseppe comes to London to help his son only for the police to arrest him, and others, under suspicion of supplying the IRA with nitroglycerine.
For many young people he will always be remembered in the role of Friar Lawrence, the well intentioned monk in Romeo and Juliet whose advice leads to the death of the star-crossed lovers. The 1996 movie, directed by Baz Lurhman and starring Leonardo DiCaprio has been used by teachers of English literature ever since to draw people in to the world of Shakespeare. Postlethwaite's portrayal of the Friar as confessor, confidante and tragic aide in the events, was one of the stand out performances in the movie.
The iron fist hidden amongst a bunch of magnolias (as it were) was most apparent in his role of the lawyer named Kobayashi in 1995's American neo-noir The Usual Suspects. Here he was a truly frightening figure.
He became known to much younger audiences for his role as Roland Tembo, a big-game hunter from England. Although sometimes violent, he adheres to his own strict moral code. Steven Spielberg praised the English actor, saying he was the best actor in the world. When Postlethwaite heard this comment he responded: I'm sure what Spielberg actually said was, 'The thing about Pete is that he thinks he's the best actor in the world.
Offscreen he was somehwhat of a shy and unassuming man who prided himself in the fact that he had never been out of work as an actor in a career which spanned over forty years. Latterly he was looked up to by many actors, young and old alike, for his superb skill as an actor who could walk on stage and with little more than a shrug, entirely inhabit his role.
His two most recent films, both released in 2010, were Inception and The Town, an action film directed by and starring Ben Affleck.
Here is a short montage of some of the roles Pete Postlethwaite has played over the years.
When I was a teenager in the early 1980s I think my first encounter with the name Nelson Mandela was probably through a badge. Although my memory is a little fuzzy about exactly when, it was most likely 1983, the year before the Special AKA band released what is still in most Top 20 Political Songs lists – Free Nelson Mandela. The song made it in to the top ten in the UK hit parade. The badge, though, with its typically 80s font, was ubiquitous.
Image Credit Flickr User Vilseskogen 
