I have some reflections on my own list from Friday:
It surprises me that there are no filmmakers or actors in there. I guess the
process of movie-making is so collaborative that it's hard to single out
individuals worthy of immense praise (although Billy Wilder was given a high
score in my original long list).
The decision to preclude involvement from people who had a creative career as a
consequence of fame in other fields made the list very different to what it
might have been too. And it led to some inner battles over the likes of Cicero
and Marcus Aurelius. The former was primarily a lawyer and politician, but is
most known for his writings, the latter was an emperor and philosopher, but his
written word has become hugely important. They did not, however, set out to be
creative artists from the start, and so that was how I made the differentiation.
And I know a similar swipe could be levelled at Arthur C. Clarke, whom I DID
include, but his novels were a separate venture to his scientific ones, and were
written deliberately as fiction to sell as fiction, so that seemed an important
difference to me.
Other notable absentees have to be The Cure, (who, after all, inspired this
list in the first place), the composer John Barry, and the likes of Clive James
and Billy Connolly. I made some hard either/or choices that I imagine will be
different on a different day, so WHEN I do this again and update it, it's
possible that Tom Lehrer, Peter Cook and Peter Ustinov might also appear.
Now I have to stop thinking about it and get on with my life......
RC 29-3-26
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