The death of Peter Tinniswood on 9th January 2003 at 66 has brought to an end a distinctive literary voice.

Tinniswood brought many memorable characters to radio and television and has left a legacy of quirky and entertaining novels ranging from cricketing stories in Tales from a Long Room and its sequel, More Tales from a Long Room to his off-beat fantasy novel Stirk of Stirk.

One of his best-remembered characters was Uncle Mort, an indomitable northerner who contracted cancer in the screenplay I Didn't Know You Cared.

Born in Liverpool, Tinniswood grew up in Sale, Greater Manchester, where he lived above the dry-cleaners run by his mother. As a young boy he would sit under the counter among the dirty laundry, listening to customers' conversations.

"It was like live radio," he said "it sharpened my ear for dialogue...I became a good mimic." He began his working life as a journalist, writing fiction in his spare time until it was able to provide him with a livelihood.

The Liverpudlian writer was diagnosed with oral cancer in 1995 and had undergone surgery to have his larynx removed. He continued to work throughout his illness. He said that writing about what was happening to him was the only way he could cope.

Among his new plays were Croak, Croak, Croak and The Last Obit. "I am writing better than I have in my life," he said shortly before his death.

Hugh Trevor-Roper, who died 26th January 2003 aged 89, became a life peer as Lord Dacre of Glanton in 1979 and was arguably the leading historian of his generation.

His career began not as an historian but as a classicist and he was a research fellow of Merton College, Oxford, when he wrote his first book, Archbishop Laud (1940). In WW2 he served in the Radio Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service and after the war travelled through Germany, tracking down and interrogating survivors of Hitler's court and reconstructing not only the circumstances of the Fuhrer's death but the power structure of his regime.

The classic that made his name was The Last Days Of Hitler (1947) but Trevor-Roper's interests could not be confined to a single period or country. In 1957, at the age of 43, he was appointed to the Regius professorship of modern history at Oxford, a position he held, in conjunction with a fellowship at Oriel, until 1980 when he moved to Cambridge as Master of Peterhouse.

His reviews and essays in the press, ranging widely in subject matter reached an audience well beyond the academic community. He also wrote Hitler's Table Talk (1953) and edited the books, Hitler's War Directives, 1939-45 (1964) and The Goebbels Diaries (1978). His work had a popular touch and he paved the way for the modern television historian, appearing on programmes regularly and also working as a journalist.

In 1985 he made the gravest of those errors of over-confidence to which he was occasionally prone when he examined the fake 60 volumes of the 'Hitler Diaries', supposedly the personal thoughts of the dead dictator, which were in fact the work of a German fraudster. Amid all his public controversies, he remained an essentially private, even a shy man. In retirement he lived at Didcot, a town convenient for both Oxford and London.

D. J. Enright, poet, critic and anthologist has died of cancer aged 82. The unsung hero of postwar British poetry, he was an outside bet - and reluctant candidate - as poet laureate in 1984.

He worked much of his life outside the UK, in Alexandria and in several South Asian universties, before returning to UK as co-editor of Encounter and was subsequently on the board of Chatto and Windus. A pupil of F. R. Leavis at Cambridge, whilst abroad he mixed with locals and was stubbornly independent, an object of mistrust to both British Embassies and foreign governments. His most notable endeavours included The Oxford Book Of Death (1983) and The Faber Book Of Fevers And Frets (1989).