MARGUERITE DURAS, an enfant terrible of modern French literature, died at her home in Paris yesterday, aged 81.
Duras won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, in 1984 for L'Amant (The Lover), decades after winning public acclaim for her works. She also wrote the 1959 screenplay for the film Hiroshima mon Amour.
She was a prolific writer of articles and letters to the press, and a radio and television debater. L'Amant, the torrid story of a poor French girl's love affair with the son of a rich Vietnamese landowner, based on her youth in colonial Vietnam, sold more than two million copies in France and became a box office hit on the screen. More than half her three dozen novels were made into films by a coterie of friends who were fellow authors, actors, directors and critics.
A socialist born in Indonesia, Duras claimed she saved the life of the late president Francois Mitterrand during the second World War, when he was a young resistance fighter hiding in Paris under the nom de guerre Capitaine Morland.
Husband and wife superstars Demi Moore and Bruce Willis hugged and kissed on stage as the Die Hard star made a rare rock star appearance. The Moonlighting and Pulp Fiction actor took time out from making his new Luc Besson film at Pinewood Studios to sing at The Forum in London with his Californian band The Accelerators.
Willis obviously loved every minute of his rock and roll fame and kissed and hugged his wife when she briefly ran on stage.
Moore (33), who plays a lap dancer in her new film Striptease, was happy to stay in the wings while her husband ploughed through a sequence of rough edged Hendrix, Beatles and Dylan cover versions.
Sir Cliff Richard, dubbed the Peter Pan of Pop, yesterday dismissed criticism that he is "too nice and too old" to play the title role in his new £3 million musical Heathclilf.
Launching the show, Sir Cliff (55) said: "People say I'm a goody two shoes who can't sing anything other than Living Doll, well that's not true."
"For years people have been telling me how young I look. I am the most perfect person in Britain to play a 38 year old. Age is a non problem," he said.
He also introduced his "unknown" co star Helen Hobson, who plays Cathy in Emily Bronte's classic tale of obsessive love.