Twenty-twenty was cut through by the Grim Reaper’s scythe, not least because of its predecessor’s gift to the world, the Novel Coronavirus Covid-19, which left millions of the unsung dead in its wake. From a personal perspective, the voices of too many authors were silenced, their fountains of words finally running dry as sure mortality took them away. One of my favourite writers, John Le Carré, passed away late in the year, but preceding him was a catalogue of talent.
January saw the death of Marion Chesney Gibbons, who wrote under the pseudonym MC Beaton, the author of over one hundred and sixty books, most notably the Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin crime novels. She sold more than twenty-one million copies of her books in a prolific forty-year career. She was eighty-three. 
Buck Henry (Zuckerman), the writer of one of the finest screenplays ever, The Graduate, also passed away in January. Buck also wrote the screenplay for Catch-22, Protocol, and To Die For. He was 89.
My fellow countryman, comedy actor, director, and writer Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, sadly succumbed to complications arising from his dementia in January. Michael Palin said of him, “He was far more than one of the funniest writer-performers of his generation, he was the complete Renaissance comedian – writer, director, presenter, historian, brilliant children’s author, and the warmest, most wonderful company you could wish to have.” He was only 77 when he died.
In February, American author, Clive Cussler, writer of the Dirk Pitt novels, died at the age of 88. Cussler wrote eighty plus novels, which were translated into more than forty languages and he earned a doctorate from the New York Maritime College for his non-fiction work Sea Hunters.
Also in February, best selling author Mary Higgins Clark died aged 92. She was known as “The Queen of Suspense” and sold more than one hundred million books in the United States alone.
In April, Per Olov Enquist, acclaimed Swedish author died aged 85, as did Chilean writer, Luis Sepúlveda aged 70 and Kenyan author Ken Walibora, famed for promoting Swahili, who passed away at the young age of 55.
In May, at the age of 84, US playwright, author and AIDS activist, Larry Kramer died. A pivotal figure during the AIDS epidemic of the eighties, Kramer wrote of the times in his 1985 play, The Normal Heart.
Also aged 55, the celebrated Spanish author, Carlos Ruiz Zafón died in June. His Barcelona-based mystery The Shadow of the Wind (La Sombra del Viento) has been influential on my writing and I often turn to it for inspiration. Like me, he was educated in Information Technology rather than literature, but his greatest work, the four-part cycle of Cemetery of Forgotten Books has its Gothic origins in the 15th Century, a mirror image of my Gothic futurism.
July saw the passing of Josephine Cox, one of the UK’s most popular authors. She wrote more than sixty books and took up the craft at the comparatively late age of 43. She was 82 when she died.
In September, Forrest Gump author, Winston Groom died aged 77, along with playwright and screenwriter, Oscar-winning Sir Ronald Harwood, who died aged 85. Born in South Africa, Harwood was regarded as one of Britain’s greatest dramatists. Late in September, another of my fellow countrymen, poet, author and dramatist Emyr Humphreys died aged 101. Widely regarded as a giant of 20th Century Welsh culture, Humphreys’ death closes a chapter on an era of committed Welsh cultural heroes that dates back to the beginning of the last century. September also saw the passing of Irish children’s author Sam Bratney aged 77.
November brought news of the death of Whitbread Prize-winning novelist and children’s author, Jill Paton Walsh aged 83. A pioneer self-publisher, her novel, Knowledge of Angels, failed to find a traditional publisher but went on to be short-listed for the 1994 Book Prize.
I thought it was all over when the bombshell landed on 14 December 2020, the finest espionage writer of all time, John le Carré, died aged 89 from pneumonia. Le Carré was one of the true greats of any kind of fiction and the acknowledged master of the espionage genre. His agent said of him, he was an “undisputed giant of English literature” who “defined the Cold War era and fearlessly spoke truth to power”. I shall miss John most of all.
RIP all the writers, authors, poets and playwrights who left us in 2020, missing you is felt all that more keenly by those of us who spend our time trying to rise to the standards you set. Words are many, but there are so few who can make the kind of magic with them all of the above did so gracefully. You will all be missed.
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