The oldest son of Andrew Lloyd Webber had "a protracted battle with gastric cancer," representatives said. "We are all totally bereft," said Webber, who missed a Broadway opening to be with his son's family. - Seattle Times (AP)
“For about a month afterward, was slurring words. He had trouble typing; he was discouraged from flying for a few weeks; and until recently, he couldn’t sign his name (he has just discovered, thanks to ‘Camelot’ autograph seekers, that that’s improving). - Variety
“Scott was just so present, and then he exterminated himself,” says Dana Gioia, former California poet laureate and a friend of Timberg for many years. “Why did he do that? Because the culture was exterminating too. He just went along with what the outer world was telling him.” - Los Angeles Times
Everything about the man said London, but he spent 20 of his 46 years in Ireland, including seven years at a grim Ulster boarding school in Ulster about which he was unusually closed-mouthed. And an acquaintance from his Irish childhood was a key figure in his downfall. - Literary Hub
A UK TV crew spotted the man — who was also seen wearing a long black coat and glasses — as he took phone pics soon after news emerged that the famous street artist’s latest stencil had just been destroyed in Herne Bay in Kent. - New York Post
"The conductor Richard Bonynge ranked her among the top four sopranos of the 20th century. And according to Ms. Zeani, Maria Callas's husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, confided to her that she was 'one of the very few sopranos that my wife is frightened of.'" - The New York Times
Her ideas of war had come from art—from photographs of the devastated city of Warsaw, which appeared deserted in the still images; from books that described battle and carnage. In real life, people got used to war quickly. - The New Yorker
“As I look at this goofy award, I can’t help but think that one day it just might be the weapon used to bludgeon me to death,” Mr. Sandler said in his familiar silly cadence during his acceptance speech. - The New York Times
Aman Dhaliwal is an actor who has appeared in Punjabi, Hindi, and Telegu films. "The suspect approached the victim in the parking lot ... and began to attack him with a hatchet and knife." - Los Angeles Times
Reddick "was a distinctive, instantly recognizable presence, even if he was not quite a household name. His voice was distinctive, too, as players of Horizon Zero Dawn, Destiny 2 and other video games on which he could be heard know." - The New York Times
Over the decades I’ve learned a huge amount about writing novels. I feel like I’m just learning on the job about screenplays. One key difference is that a screenplay is a contribution to something that a team is going to work on, so it’s necessarily a collaborative document. - The Millions
"Elena Poniatowska has chronicled every major social movement in Mexico over seven decades, her 40-plus books a one-woman time capsule of a country's modern history. … (She) still writes a weekly column, showcasing her uncanny ability to get her subjects — presidents, murderers, victims of unspeakable crimes — to crack open." - MSN (The Washington Post)
A series of papers, discovered in Florentine archives, concerns the emancipation in 1452 of an enslaved Circassian woman, probably abducted as a girl, named Caterina, which was the name of Leonardo's mother. All of the documents are linked to his father, who wrote some of them himself. - NBC News
Lynn Seymour’s death last Wednesday undammed an outpouring of truly wrenching sadness from those whom this extraordinary ballerina injected with her poison - as the choreographer Frederick Ashton memorably said about his enslavement to Anna Pavlova. - The Arts Desk
"(He) wrote some 60 novels, including westerns, mysteries, science and fantasy fiction, and children's books. But he was best known for two series of novels with enormous mass-market appeal: The Kent Family Chronicles, eight volumes written in the 1970s ..., and the North and South Civil War trilogy." - The New York Times
