Is he still alive? The mystery of DB Cooper – the hijacker who disappeared

In 1971, a man held a plane to ransom for $200,000, then parachuted out in his suit and dress shoes, never to be seen again. What happened to him?

Simon Majaro obituary

Other lives: Management consultant, author and patron of chamber music

Other lives: Translator who made many great works of Russian literature accessible to English readers

Director in the West End and regional theatre for five decades who often worked with the playwright Alan Ayckbourn

Other lives: Pioneering documentarian and author who wrote ‘the bible’ for documentary film-makers

Other lives: English lecturer and writer who turned from fiction to non-fiction – and back again

Other lives: British Library curator and author of The Life of the Buddha

Paleographer, historian and expert on ancient Chinese writing

Foreign correspondent who went on to become a hugely successful thriller writer best known for The Day of the Jackal

Distinguished Kenyan novelist, poet and academic who championed writing in African languages rather than in English

One of the leading gay writers of his generation known for his bestseller A Boy’s Own Story and his biography of Jean Genet

Feminist writer and activist whose 1975 book Against Our Will revolutionised attitudes to rape

Other lives: Sociology lecturer at Liverpool University who played a key role in establishing the anti-Pinochet campaign in Britain

Writer and film-maker at the heart of the African Dawn group who directed the critically acclaimed 1991 feature Ama

Teacher and writer of ‘youth novels’, which he defended as a literature worth studying and preserving