LIVES REMEMBERED

Charmian Carr

Charmian Carr, who has died aged 73, was an American actress best known for her role as Liesl, the eldest of the seven von Trapp children in The Sound

of Music; she was also the singer Michael Jackson’s interior designer and the author of two books inspired by her role in the film.

Charmian Carr’s mother, a former vaudevillian, had recommended her to a casting agent – “She’s 21, but she could pass for 16” – and she pushed her into taking the part of Liesl, despite the fact that her daughter had no previous professional singing or acting experience.

Liesl captured the hearts of teenage boys around the world, and Charmian Carr received numerous love letters. She received hundreds of letters from children who said that she had inspired them to become actors, and notes from parents telling her that they had named their daughter Liesl. Born December 27 1942, died September 17 2016

Richard Whittington-Egan

Richard Whittington-Egan, who has died aged 91, was a journalist, biographer, literary critic, historian of British crime and a towering authority on Jack the Ripper; his work was as remarkable for its singularly convoluted style as it was for his probing, almost obsessive, research.

Whittington-Egan was a shrewd analyst of the criminal mind. He developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Jack the Ripper killings in the East End of London in the autumn of 1888, and was a dissenting voice when, in 1965, the American author Tom Cullen identified the Ripper as an obscure barrister, Montague John Druitt. “It won’t do,” complained Whittington-Egan, “it simply won’t do.”

There were too many unanswered questions, chief of which was: “Can Druitt be shown

to have connections with Whitechapel?” Nevertheless, Whittington-Egan’s scepticism failed to extinguish interest in Druitt as a principal Ripper contender.

Whittington-Egan’s insistence on scholarly accuracy led to his 1975 study, A Casebook on Jack

The Ripper, the first significant correction of decades of accumulating error. In it, he dealt with every major theory as to the Ripper’s identity bringing an acutely critical mind to bear on the crucial details. He concluded that he found no case to answer against any of the accused: “They are dismissed. The verdict must remain undisturbed: some person or persons unknown.” Born October 22 1924, died September 14 2016

Jonathan Riley-Smith

Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, the former Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge, who has died aged 78, was one of the world’s greatest historians of the medieval crusades; he was a major figure of crusade studies at the international level but was particularly important in energising the large growth in academic interest in crusading in the United Kingdom over a period of more than 50 years.

Riley-Smith’s scholarly output was prodigious and the high profile which the history of the crusades currently enjoys owes a very great deal to his energy and achievements.

In The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986) and The

First Crusaders, 1099-1131 (1996) Riley-Smith gave particular attention to the motivations of early crusaders. He explained how crusading was perceived as a defensive rather than offensive form of warfare, in that it was understood as being aimed at regaining lands which the crusaders believed had been won forever for Christianity by the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Indeed, he examined the superficially difficult and ultimately Augustinian notion that killing on crusade could be an act of love.

Born June 27 1938, died September 13 2016