Media

Birthdays

The Times
October 16 2007 

Emma Nicholson has been a member of the European Parliament for ten years and has just returned from a week in Iraq where she was the first non-Iraqi to address the Parliament. She is convinced that “they are beginning to turn the corner, but it is a very slow process, just as our democracy was”. She proposed a new forum where the new Iraqi Government and the European Parliament could discuss issues of common concern such as whether Turkey should join the EU.

She has a multitude of interests, from the future of the Marsh Arabs, whose case she has been propounding since 1991, to a charity she set up with J. K.
Rowling to improve the welfare of vulnerable children across Europe. She will be spending her birthday at the Guildhall for the Man Booker Prize dinner which was begun by her late husband, Sir Michael Caine, who was chairman of Booker. She is already getting presents and cards from Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Romania. “I love birthdays. I have told all my friends that I’m going to live to be 104 so they’re all going to have to keep working.” Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne is 66 today.

RGT Peter Bowles, actor, 71; Dr Stefan Buczacki, biologist, broadcaster and author, 62; Max Bygraves, entertainer, 85; Alison Chitty, theatre designer, 59; Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, Secretary of State for Scotland, 1995-97, 53; Gunter Grass, novelist and poet, 80; Terry Griffiths, snooker player, 60; Angela Lansbury, actress, 82.