Gavin Hodge, who has died aged 65, was one of the first celebrity hairdressers, and became known as much for his sexual conquests as for his skills with the scissors; his era was the 1960s and 1970s, when the crimper emerged from the shadows of the salon to become a sought-after man about town.

Also, here is an excerpt from the an obit written for British Manjor-General Ken Perkins:

There were some who thought that Perkins might have climbed higher were it not for his uncompromising nature: he was never afraid to go out on a limb or to ruffle feathers by questioning the official line.

Is this more honest style of obit reporting beneficial?

ED: Also take a look at Ming’s fine post on world obituaries, which includes a section about those in Britain.

What makes The Economist’s approach so unique — and laudable — is that, as editor Ann Wroe puts it, a chronological retelling of a person’s existence is, well, boring.  In short, it doesn’t do life justice.

During an October 2008 New York Public Library panel discussion (embedded video at bottom), she said:

“I think you do have to hone in on certain points in [life].  There will be one or two incidents that will really illuminate the whole thing.  I think it was Virginia Woolf who said that it might be possible to write a whole life out of one tiny incident — maybe even just two minutes — and I think that might be true.”

Take, for instance, the magazine’s obituary of Norman Borlaug, who died in September.  It didn’t begin by listing his day and place of birth, nor did it dive into details of his upbringing and education.  No, instead, it began to tell a story.

“AS DAWN broke over northern Mexico, Norman Borlaug wriggled from his sleeping bag. Rats had run over him all night, and he was cold. In a corner of the dilapidated research station where he had tried to sleep, he found a rusting plough. He took it outside, strapped the harness to himself, and began, furiously and crazily, in front of a group of astonished peasants, to plough the land.”

Hook. Line. Sinker.

Here’s the man’s commemoration: an anecdote about the time he defiantly pushed a plough through a third-world field, a metaphor for his commitment to becoming a “feeder of the world”.

Obituaries are opportunities to do more than recall facts, and the realization makes The Economist stand out.  Whether that mode of storytelling will transition to the Web as journalism makes its shift remains to be seen.  But this project will certainly look for clues that may hint at an answer.

[Note: The panel discussion is entitled "DEAD from the NYPL: The Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries", and the entire video is worth a watch (Ms. Wroe's contributions begin somewhere around the 1:15 mark).]

Johnson mentions how she encountered Uri Dromi, the only obituary writer in Israel, for Ha’aretz, a liberal newspaper. Dromi writes only two short stories about people who died every week. Having lived in Israel for 11 years as a child, the fact that Ha’aretz publishes even two obituaries is quite surprising to me.

Johnson wonders, “How is it possible in any country, but especially a country like Israel, crammed as it is with history and violence and eventful deaths?” This really resonated with me. When I was a child, I never saw either obituaries or death notices in newspapers. Death notices, the kind that just give generic information about the death of the person, were only placed as signs on walls around the neighborhood.

It is possible that I was so young that it never occurred to look for such a thing in the newspaper, but I have never seen longer obituaries in any Israeli media outlets, whether print or online. This is the case in spite of the fact that Israel has fought several wars over the last 60 years and there have been several suicide bombings in Haifa, the city where I lived.  Tragic as it is, there were many opportunities to write poignant stories commemorating those killed. And yet, I did a quick web search to see if Dromi’s stories are accessible online on the Ha’aretz website and I could not find any.

So, what I take away from all this is that people come from different places, have different traditions and beliefs. Although this project is geared mostly to a North American audience, we should not assume that a published story commemorating a person’s life is a self-evident concept for people. I am American, but it wasn’t for me.