Death
Cooper died at the age of 48 after falling from a train as it passed through Surbiton, Surrey, returning from a Guild of Dramatists' Christmas dinner at the Garrick on 2 December 1966. A post-mortem showed he had consumed the equivalent of half a bottle of whisky and the coroner at Kingston in January 1967 returned a verdict of misadventure. There have been several attempts to attribute his death to suicide, notably by theatre journal The Stage, and when interviewed by Humphrey Carpenter in 1995, Douglas Cleverdon's widow Nest told him that she believed it was suicide. Cooper's family, understandably perhaps, have always strongly disputed this, not only because it bears no relationship to the playwright's apparent frame of mind during the period leading up to his death, but because it unfairly colours appraisal of his work from an academic standpoint.
Read more about this topic: Giles Cooper
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Farewell deare flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye liv’d, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my sent be good, I care not, if
It be as short as yours.”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
““Promise me solemnly,” I said to her as she lay on what I believed to be her death bed, “if you find in the world beyond the grave that you can communicate with me—that there is some way in which you can make me aware of your continued existence—promise me solemnly that you will never, never avail yourself of it.” She recovered and never, never forgave me.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Liberal hopefulness
Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.”
—William Empson (1906–1984)