One of the things that I haved to look forward to when I die is that I will receive one of these sorts of obits in the annual supplement to the King's College Cambridge report, sent to all members of the College. I got a master's degree there. Unfortunately I will not be able to read it, that being the nature of the thing.
It will be noted that despite the subject matter, this obit below is a typically dreary US-style tomstone obit. Bad habits are not easily unlearned.
--- Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
> [I didn't realize it was so recent a transformation,
> and so traceable to
> one man]
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/nyregion/30massingberd.html
>
> The New York Times
> December 30, 2007
>
> Hugh Massingberd, Laureate for the
> Departed, Dies
>
> By MARGALIT FOX
>
> Hugh Massingberd, a celebrated former obituaries
> editor of The
> Telegraph of London who made a once-dreary page
> required reading by
> speaking frankly, wittily and often gleefully
> ill of the dead, became
> the recipient of his own services after dying in
> West London on
> Christmas Day. He was 60 and lived in London.
>
> The cause was cancer, according to The
> Telegraph. The newspaper
> announced Mr. Massingberd's death in an
> expansive obituary that
> described, not unkindly, his being "invariably
> strapped for cash" and
> the "gourmandism" and "bingeing" that had turned
> him "into an
> impressively corpulent presence whose moon face
> lit up with Pickwickian
> benevolence."
>
> Sometimes called the father of the modern
> British obituary, Mr.
> Massingberd was The Telegraph's obituaries
> editor from 1986 to 1994. He
> was also a shy autodidact who had never been to
> college; a past editor
> of Burke's Peerage, the venerable record book of
> the titled families of
> Britain and Ireland; the author of dozens of
> books on the English
> aristocracy; a recognized authority on the
> country homes of England,
> stately and moldy alike; and a rabid theatergoer
> whose enthusiasm for
> "Phantom of the Opera" was undimmed by the fact
> that he had seen it
> more than 50 times and knew every word and every
> note by heart.
>
> In 2002 The Spectator, a British weekly
> magazine, described Mr.
> Massingberd as "an English eccentric of the sort
> Hollywood imagines
> shoot snipe in their underpants."
>
> Mr. Massingberd did not actually shoot snipe in
> his underpants, but he
> did once pose for a photograph dressed as a
> Roman emperor garlanded
> with sausages, as his obituary in The Telegraph
> helpfully reminded
> readers on Thursday.
>
> Traditionally, the obituary departments of most
> newspapers were little
> Siberias, and The Telegraph's was no exception
> when Mr. Massingberd
> arrived. The long, leaden recitals of awards,
> club memberships and
> honorary degrees massed on the page were
> distasteful pills that
> writers, and readers, choked down dutifully each
> day.
>
> Mr. Massingberd transformed the paper's
> obituaries from ponderous,
> sycophantic eulogies into mordant, warts-and-all
> profiles of the
> delectable departed. His model, he often said,
> was the 17th-century
> English writer John Aubrey, whose collection of
> biographical sketches,
> "Brief Lives," offered gossipy backstairs
> portraits of eminences of the
> time.
>
> In Mr. Massingberd's hands the newspaper
> obituary became unabashed
> entertainment, and the page attracted a
> passionate following that
> endures to this day. It also helped to set a
> benchmark for newspapers
> throughout Britain, where obituaries are now far
> more irreverent, more
> editorial and more prurient than their American
> counterparts. (Witness
> The Telegraph's send-off of one Lt. Col.
> Geoffrey Knowles, "who as a
> subaltern was bitten in the buttocks by a bear
> -- he survived but the
> bear expired.")
>
> Typically unsigned, Telegraph obituaries are
> written by a stable of
> contributors. But during Mr. Massingberd's
> tenure, observers widely
> agreed, every obit in the paper bore his droll,
> distinctive stamp.
> Naturally, he covered the presidents, kings and
> captains of industry
> who are the grist of obit pages everywhere. But
> Mr. Massingberd also
> sought out eccentrics; having the good fortune
> to live in Britain, he
> found them.
>
> One Telegraph obituary, from 1991, opened this
> way: "The Third Lord
> Moynihan, who has died in Manila, aged 55,
> provided through his
> character and career ample ammunition for
> critics of the hereditary
> principle. His chief occupations were bongo
> drummer, confidence
> trickster, brothel-keeper, drug-smuggler and
> police informer."
>
> Another, from 1988, memorialized Peter Langan, a
> London restaurateur:
> "Often he would pass out amid the cutlery before
> doing any damage, but
> occasionally he would cruise menacingly beneath
> the tables, biting
> unwary customers' ankles."
>
> And there was this much-quoted line, also from
> 1988, which appeared in
> The Telegraph's obituary of John Allegro. A
> once-renowned scholar of
> the Dead Sea Scrolls, Mr. Allegro later advanced
> a theory that Judaism
> and Christianity were the products of an ancient
> cult that worshiped
> sex and mushrooms. His obit in The Telegraph
> pronounced him "the
> Liberace of biblical scholarship."
>
> To dispatch his subjects, Mr. Massingberd used
> the thinnest of rapiers,
> but also the sharpest. Cataclysmic
> understatement and carefully coded
> euphemism were the stylistic hallmarks of his
> page. Here, for the
> benefit of American readers, is an abridged
> Massingberd-English
> dictionary:
>
> ¶"Convivial": Habitually drunk.
>
> ¶"Did not suffer fools gladly": Monstrously
> foul-tempered.
>
> ¶"Gave colorful accounts of his exploits": A
> liar.
>
> ¶"A man of simple tastes": A complete vulgarian.
>
> ¶"A powerful negotiator": A bully.
>
> ¶"Relished the cadences of the English
> language": An incorrigible
> windbag.
>
> ¶"Relished physical contact": A sadist.
>
> ¶"An uncompromisingly direct ladies' man": A
> flasher.
>
> Hugh John Montgomery was born on Dec. 30, 1946,
> in Cookham Dean, in the
> Berkshire district of England. His family, The
> Daily Mail wrote in
> 1994, were members of the "stranded gentry."
> Hugh's mother was a
> schoolteacher; his father worked for the BBC.
>
> But as young Hugh was dreamily aware, the
> Montgomerys had nobler roots:
> Through their blue-blooded Massingberd
> relatives, he stood to inherit
> two country houses. In the 1960s, in the hope of
> securing one, Hugh's
> father changed the family name to
> Montgomery-Massingberd. But both
>
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