Deaths
- 14 January – Harold Abrahams, athlete (born 1899)
- 18 January – Walter H. Thompson, Scotland Yard detective, bodyguard of Winston Churchill (born 1890)
- 22 January – Herbert Sutcliffe, cricketer (born 1894)
- 1 March – Paul Scott, novelist, playwright and poet (born 1920)
- 4 April – Sir Morien Morgan, aeronautics engineer (born 1912)
- 9 April – Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, architect (born 1883)
- 21 April – Sandy Denny, singer (born 1947)
- 18 May – Selwyn Lloyd, politician (born 1904)
- 7 June – Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1897)
- 30 July – John Mackintosh, politician (born 1929)
- 14 August – Nicolas Bentley, writer and illustrator (born 1907)
- 28 August - Robert Shaw, actor and novelist (born 1927)
- 7 September – Keith Moon, drummer (The Who) (drug overdose) (born 1946)
- 9 September – Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish poet (born 1892)
Read more about this topic: 1978 In The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier’s sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.”
—Philip Caputo (b. 1941)
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)
“On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances ...”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)