Today’s birthdays

Miss Thelma Holt, theatre producer, is 89; Miss Grace Bumbry, opera and concert singer, 84; Baroness Pitkeathley, Chairman, Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care, 2009-15, 81; Prof B.D. Josephson, winner, Nobel Prize for Physics, 1973, 81; Prof Dame Marcela Contreras, Professor of Transfusion Medicine, UCL Medical School, UCL, 79; Mr Nicholas Payne, opera director, 76; Mr Rick Stein, restaurateur and broadcaster, 74; Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, QC,

Warden of Wadham College, Oxford; Director of Public Prosecutions, 2003-08, 68; Ms Jackie Ballard, Chief Executive, Action on Hearing Loss, 2007-12, 68; Lord Allen of Kensington, Chairman, British Red Cross, 2013-14, 64; and Mr Roger Mosey, Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, 63.

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Sir Isaac Newton in 1643 and of the death of T.S. Eliot in 1965.