Two lives

Albert Camus, never the most cheery of souls, came up with the zinger:

“It’s no use reminding yourself daily that you are mortal. It’ll be brought home to you soon enough.”

And the next couple of days will have Nat Lofthouse and Susannah York on the obituary pages.

A good life

In the mid-50s Malcolm went to Wembley to see Lofthouse as archetypal centre-forward, with Stan Matthews on the wing. Lofthouse was on the losing side when Matthews finally got his Cup winners medal. Lofthouse had already served his time, doing 3 a.m. shifts down the pit as a Bevin Boy (right), then turning out for Bolton in the afternoon. Eat your heart out, Wayne Rooney — there’s one bit of class you’ll never emulate.

The cliché has it that around the age of thirteen we freeze our choice of sporting heroes: that would be about right for Malcolm.

An abbreviated one

By the time Susannah York came along (around the start of the ’60s if memory serves Malcolm true) his tastes in girls were already formed. Yet there she was in Tunes of Glory and (acting well below her real age) The Greengage Summer. Tony Richardson kept her still the sweet innocent, and Albert Finney’s due reward, in Tom Jones. She featured among the thespian deities for Zimmerman’s Man for All Seasons. Robert Aldrich sensationalised her for The Killing of Sister George. James Kennaway’s script gave her a stockings-and suspenders scene before killing her off in The Battle of Britain. Sydney Pollack made her suffer for her BAFTA in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? And that was just one decade.

After that, three times a lady and mother for the original Superman franchise.

Two reminders of

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.