Is Shakespeare still relevant to today’s students.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has evoked wartime British leader Winston Churchill in a speech to Britain's Parliament.

The world also said goodbye to U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement who died in July. Other former political figures who died this year include Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, New York Mayor David Dinkins, Arizona Gov. Here is a roll call of some influential figures who died in 2020 (cause of death cited for younger people, if available):___JANUARY___David Stern, 77. The guitarist who supplied the scratching, seething sound that fueled the highly influential British punk band Gang of Four. He fused African rhythms with funk to become one of the most influential musicians in world dance music.

LONDON Maggie OFarrell won the Womens Prize for Fiction on Wednesday for Hamnet, a novel that explores the lives of William Shakespeares often-maligned wife and lost son. OFarrells novel beat finalists including Hilary Mantels Tudor saga The Mirror and the Light and Bernardine Evaristos Booker Prize winner Girl, Woman, Other to the 30,000-pound ($39,000) award. The Northern Ireland-born O'Farrell said she had long been fascinated by Hamnet Shakespeare, who died aged 11 in 1596 likely from the plague. Shakespeare himself is never mentioned by name in Hamnet, which centers on his children and wife Anne Hathaway, called Agnes in the book. OFarrell said Hathaway has been portrayed as an illiterate strumpet because she was uneducated and eight years older than Shakespeare.

"It is with a broken heart and with infinite sadness that we have the extreme pain of announcing the departure of Max von Sydow,” Diamond said. In 1980, von Sydow starred as the evil emperor Ming the Merciless in "Flash Gordon." He was baptized Carl Adolf von Sydow, but later changed his first name to Max. “I’m very grateful to the schooling I had in Sweden because in order to learn acting you have to work, work, work,” he said. Von Sydow married Swedish actress Christina Olin in 1951 and had two sons, Clas and Henrik.