For decades, Valeriya Novodvorskaya was a thorn in the side of various Soviet and Russian administrations. In 1969 she was sent to prison for criticising the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring; 41 years later she signed the online manifesto of the "Putin must go" campaign. She was the founder and chairwoman of the Democratic Union party, though she never held public office, and a member of the editorial board of the liberal magazine The New Times.

When he emerged in the late 1960s Johnny Winter stood out as much because of his appearance as for the blistering solos and soaring slide technique that became his trademarks and made him a favourite with audiences from the Woodstock festival to London's Royal Albert Hall.

Sir Peter Barclay emerged from worthy but relative obscurity to chair the Committee on the Roles and Tasks of Social Workers at the government's behest in 1981. He later headed the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Inquiry into Income and Wealth which examined in depth the growing inequalities in British society.

Alison Bielski's preoccupation as a poet was with Welsh myth and legend, which she used to sometimes startling effect both on the printed page and in constructions that owed something to Concrete Poetry and the experiments of the European avant-garde. She was aware of the typographical shapes made by poems and of the gestalt qualities of words, so that her work was of interest to visual artists as well as the literary-minded.

Paul Horn was an innovative jazz flautist and pioneer of New Age music. He began playing the piano at the age of four, the clarinet at 10 and the saxophone at 12. He studied the clarinet and flute at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, and later gained a master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

Sonny Miller was one of the most renowned cinematographers in the history of surfing, whether shooting from the beach, a jet ski, a helicopter or from among the waves themselves. Before turning to film he had been a still photographer whose close-up action photos were influential in the growth and popularity of snowboarding and skateboarding first, in the US and later around the world.

Isabel de Madariaga transformed the study of 18th century Russia and was an inspiration for scholars and students worldwide. She was born in 1919, the daughter of Salvador de Madariaga, the ambassador and representative of the Spanish Republic to France and the League of Nations, and a distinguished historian and writer. Isabel saw herself as a genuine "European"; she was fiercely proud of her Spanish roots but also conscious of the Scottish and British ancestry of her mother, Constance Helen Margaret, née Archibald.

With one look Eileen Ford could make or break a career. What set apart a million-dollar super model? "Fire in the eye," she said. "Mesmerising energy, intelligence, an I-know-who-I am look. It's an elusive quality best described by the words charisma, excitement, magnetism. It's a star quality I pray for."

Alice Coachman Davis was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. She won the high jump at the 1948 Games in London with a national and Olympic record of 1.68 metres – the only American woman to win gold. She was honoured with a 175-mile motorcade in her native Georgia when she returned, but the black and white audiences were segregated at her official ceremony in Albany.

Nadine Gordimer won the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature for morally complex novels that explored the cost of racial conflict in apartheid-era South Africa, tightly interweaving personal and public passions. As a white South African who hated apartheid, she also played a political role in her country's troubled history.

Lorin Maazel was the most prolific conductor of his generation, a child prodigy who performed with the New York Philharmonic at the age of 12. Born in Paris, raised in the US and fluent in English, French, German and Italian, Maazel conducted more than 150 orchestras in more than 5,000 opera and concert performances and made at least 300 recordings.

The character actor Bob Hastings made his biggest impact as the bumbling Lieutenant Elroy Carpenter, opposite Ernest Borgnine in the American sitcom McHale's Navy. In a varied career, which began on the radio when he played the role of Archie Andrews in a series based on the Archie comic book series, he also provided voices for numerous cartoons.

Tommy's contribution to The Ramones shouldn’t be under-estimated, especially since he co-produced Leave Home, Rocket To Russia (both 1977) and Road To Ruin (1978)

One letter, Garden recalled, came from a teacher who said he was convinced that Annie on My Mind had prevented a student from committing suicide

He never forgot that he and his music inhabited a country at war