LIVES REMEMBERED

David Bowie

David Bowie, who has died aged 69, was a rock musician of rare originality and talent; he was also, variously, a producer, painter, film actor, art critic, the progenitor of bisexual chic, a family man and an astute multi-millionaire.

Endlessly manipulating his public identity, Bowie was once rumoured to be an alien from outer space, and suggested in the mid-1970s that Britain needed a fascist prime minister. “I am an actor,” he said. “My whole professional life is an act.”

Although he drew heavily on other artists for his inspiration, he had a wealth of new ideas of his own and wrote some of the most quirky and poignant songs of the 1970s and 1980s: Space Oddity, Changes, Fame, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans and Aladdin Sane.

Jangling and melancholy, his music matched imagistic lyrics with his rich, British-accented singing style and tunes that owed as much to white opera as to black soul, and to the simple pop of the Beatles as to the drugged edginess of the Velvet Underground. Born January 8 1947, died January 10 2016

Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman, the actor and director, who has died aged 69, took sneering screen villainy to new levels as (among others) the scheming chaplain Obadiah Slope in the BBC’s television adaptation of Trollope’s The

Barchester Chronicles (1982), the German terrorist kingpin Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988), the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films.

Rickman became such a familiar figure that the American cartoon show Family Guy once depicted him calling his own answering machine, reminding himself to perform mundane household tasks before ending with the chilling warning: ‘’Do not disappoint me.” Peter Mandelson said that he would like Rickman to portray him in any biopic, because “he’s not afraid to play the hard guy’’.

In fact Rickman did not always play baddies, and his voice was equally effective when he was Colonel Brandon, Kate Winslet’s crumpled suitor in Ang Lee’s

Sense and Sensibility (1995), or

King Louis XIV in A Little Chaos (2014, he also directed the film), set in the court of the Sun King, and also starring Kate Winslet.

He lived for half a century in London with Rima Horton, and the couple finally married last year. Born February 21 1946, died January 14 2016

André Courrèges

André Courrèges, who has died aged 92, was one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century; in the mid-1960s he changed the way women dressed, and did so almost overnight.

Courrèges’s “new look” swept the world in 1964 almost as dramatically as had that of Dior in 1947, but, unlike Dior, whose clothes evoked a bygone age, Courrèges’s highly distinctive designs owed virtually nothing to tradition, instead they embraced the “Space Age”.

Often credited with inventing the miniskirt (although Mary Quant and John Bates have also been cited as its creator), Courrèges’s other innovations include the graphic A-line shift, the ribbed bodysuit, the short white go-go boot, the skinny-legged hip-hugger, and the trouser suit. He brought Modernism to clothing design and both fashionistas and women on the high street were dazzled by his futuristic vision. He was immediately touted as the designer for “tomorrow”.

Courrèges was shy, quiet and diffident, a man who saw himself as an artist rather than a businessman. Fit and athletic – he had been a keen rugby player, mountaineer and pelota enthusiast – he remained the epitome of stylish youthfulness, wearing sugar-pink cord trousers, polo shirt, sweater and trainers well into old age. Born March 9 1923, died January 7 2016