The guitarist Mabon "Teenie" Hodges was a mainstay of Hi Rhythm, the Memphis studio group assembled and mentored by the producer and songwriter Willie Mitchell to back Al Green, Ann Peebles, Otis Clay, Syl Johnson and OV Wright, the superlative Southern soul singers signed to Hi Records in the late 1960s and through most of the '70s.

Benjamin Whitaker, an Eton-educated lawyer and lifelong admirer of George Orwell, made a significant contribution to civil and human rights at home and abroad, but not before becoming the first Labour MP to win the safe Tory seat of Hampstead, in the 1966 General Election, helping to give Harold Wilson's incumbent government a 97-seat majority.

"What did the president know and when did he know it?" Those words – among the most famous lines in all American politics, encapsulating the Watergate scandal – were delivered by Howard Baker, then Senator from Tennessee and throughout his career the standard-bearer of a moderate Republicanism that today is all but extinct.

The author of 36 books, John Rowe Townsend was a leading figure in the postwar revival of children’s literature. He was also children’s books editor for The Guardian and set up that paper’s Children’s Fiction Prize in 1967, writing authoritatively about children’s literature while remaining a popular author in his own right. Never afraid to enter into controversies, he was for many years one of children’s literature’s best-known ambassadors.

Blessed with a gruff baritone voice that was instantly recognisable, and a heart-rending ability to convey his travails, trials and tribulations in his memorable compositions and interpretations of other people’s material, the soul singer, guitarist and composer Bobby Womack was a constant in popular music, a performer whose career and influence spanned over five decades and seeped into many genres and areas of popular culture, whether the listener was aware of it or not.

Salwa Bugaighis was a prominent Libyan activist who became an international face of her country’s efforts to build democracy. She was assassinated by gunmen who stormed her home in Benghazi shortly after she had cast her vote in the country’s parliamentary elections.

He was a key figure in the creation of a highly successful British weekly science magazine. He was a prolific author who published almost 40 popular books. But most of all he educated, excited and inspired countless millions of television viewers, taking them from the comfort of their living rooms to the exhilarating high frontier of modern science.

A whiz at conducting small-screen action drama, the Canadian director William Brayne found a natural home in British commercial television of the 1970s, his no-nonsense style effectively delivering both crowd-pleasing car chases and scuffles, and lean and mean atmospheres in the quieter interludes.

Martha Hyer was a glamorous Hollywood actress who was cast in several leading roles, but is best remembered as a reliable supporting player, particularly adept at embodying spoilt society girls set on wooing the leading man away from the partner for whom he is obviously meant.

The author Ana Maria Matute was best known for her lyrical books set during the Spanish Civil War. Among her many literary awards was the 2010 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's foremost literary honour; she was only the third woman to receive the prize.

As General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Norman Willis had a fraught time overseeing the union movement while it lost members, fighting the anti-union legislation perpetrated by the Conservative government and going through a series of bitter inter-union battles that threatened to destroy it.

Andrei Mironov, who was killed in eastern Ukraine on 24 May, was a 60-year-old veteran of the Russian human-rights movement. He was apparently hit by shrapnel from mortar shells during a battle between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists near the village of Andreyevka near the city of Slaviansk. He had been acting as a translator for the Italian photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli, who was also killed in the incident.

Steve Rossi was one half of the prolific comedy duo Allen & Rossi, which became a favourite of The Ed Sullivan Show and other American variety shows. His friend of 40 years, Michael Flores, who was manager of the Silver Nugget casino, said: "I met every major entertainer in the country through Stevie, and I'm going to miss him."

An accomplished star of screen, stage and television, and a practitioner of the "method" style of acting, Eli Wallach will be best remembered for his roles in two classic Westerns: as Calvera, the leader of the terrorising bandit gang in The Magnificent Seven (1960), and as wily outlaw Tuco in Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), but his diverse gallery of memorable characters included his role as the prospective seducer of the child-like bride in Elia Kazan's sensational Baby Doll (1956), the actor's screen debut at the age of 40, which won him a Bafta award as "best newcomer".

Through much of the 1960s, Ultra Violet, who has died of cancer, was one of the so-called "Superstars" gravitating around Andy Warhol at his New York studio, the Factory, as if determined to embody the artist's famous, prescient pronouncement that "in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes."