Collected South African Obituaries, by Chris Barron

Writing an obituary is an exacting art. It takes great skill to examine a person's life, very often 70 years or more, and to capture his or her essence within a single newspaper column.

Chris Barron is South Africa's leading obituarist who has been doing exactly this for a number of years in the pages of the Sunday Times.

Here, for the first time, is a collection of obituaries of South Africans who made their mark in politics, academia, business, religion, sport, on the stage, as artists, writers and eccentrics.