Interview with Ann Wroe, Obituaries Editor at The Economist

Ann Wroe edits the Obituaries column of The Economist and is a huge part of what makes that magazine a joy to read. I interviewed her about life, writing and public grief.

Please tell my readers a little about yourself.

I’ve been the Obit Editor here for 17 years now — I started in 2003. I came to it because I enjoyed the Obits. The Economist started the Obituaries in 1995, so there was only one editor before me. I deputised for him and thought this is fantastic, I love doing this. So I let the editor know that I was interested if it came up, and when that happened I started editing that section.

I enjoy it hugely, and that surprises people. But I’m not dealing with death in the Obituaries, I’m dealing with life.

I’d like to hear how you decide who you’re going to write about, especially when two exceptional people die, like David Bowie and Prince.

The double obituary that week was completely exceptional and I’m never going to do it again. Another difficult one was when Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe died in the same week. I did Tom Wolfe and the books editor did Philip Roth, so they ran opposite each other. Of course, we’re talking about how to manage that more and more now.

Does the public outpouring of grief for individuals affect your work?

I don’t think these outpourings of grief affect me. I was remarkably stoical about Princess Diana, but there were so many people in floods of tears who didn’t care for her particularly in life. My problem is that I try to get into people’s heads. I don’t like to pass judgement in my obituaries. When I covered Bin Laden, I told the story of his life straightforwardly, and talked about him taking his family to the beach — but people don’t want to think he was an ordinary man, they wanted to think he was a monster.

At the same time, we don’t want to see that saints have a seamier side. We took Jean Vanier at his own estimation as a holy man, and his own estimation was fake. If you try and get in someone’s head, you are going to risk giving too rosy a picture of them. I try to not do that, I try to get outside views, but it’s always a risk.

When Jimmy Saville died, I thought I might do him as someone who was a bit of a character. I went to the London Library to get his autobiography — and something about it was really creepy. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew I couldn’t write about him.

There are always hazards in the job, but that doesn’t stop it being always interesting. I feel so privileged to be able to do that.

What’s it like to do your job now, when we again have a maybe more general public outpouring of grief?

To be true to the people I’m obituarising, I need to be true to their character, not the character of their times. That’s who they are, they can’t choose the time that they died.

I’ve just delivered this week’s obituary, and it’s a pretty jolly one — Michel Roux. The first thing I thought when I delivered it was that it’s sad now that the restaurants are all closed; maybe a frivolous thought, but I wondered if we wanted that as an antidote to how we are feeling.

My own view of death doesn’t change. It’s not the end, it’s a passageway through to a different form of existence. I feel so strongly the presence of people I’ve loved who have died, I know that is true. In that sense I don’t feel any differently about death now compared to any other time. I feel differently about life — I’m writing about the odd ways we are beginning to see our existence through this — but I don’t think it’s impinging on the obituaries yet.

I’d like to hear more about how you balance the personal, the political and the global in the stories you tell.

If it’s a global issue I want to come into it through an ordinary life — a young boy in Syria, a woman with AIDs in Africa, a prisoner in Guantánamo. These tell a story that is global and national, but I don’t labour the point because the person I’m writing about wouldn’t labour the point or even mention it. The wider significance would be in the corners of their lives.

I’m interested to hear you talk about your writing on people who were not famous at the time they died — Heather Heyer and Cédric Mauduit as well as Li Wenliang.

I always find these stories very moving. The most heartbreaking was about Qusai Abtini, a Syrian boy who was going to become a Hollywood star — he was just an ordinary boy, and that was his appeal as an actor, but his parents tried to take him out of Aleppo at the wrong time. He had his whole life ahead of him. It was heart-breaking.

There’s a story a colleague just sent me about an Italian priest, who died of coronavirus after giving a ventilator to a younger parishioner. It’s a wonderful story, but I’m not sure how much I can find out about him with limited Italian. I know it’s a good story when a bell goes off — I almost hear it in my head. People who were the last to speak their language, for example; I love ordinary people who were the last person to do something, and they don’t really appear in the papers.

On the less poignant side is when people are killed by something that’s been an obsession of theirs — a man who chased the tornadoes and was killed by tornadoes, or who was fascinated by crocodiles and was eaten by one. It’s people’s obsessions that interest me because I want to get to grips with the things that interest them, whether it’s inventing the best vanilla topping or wood sculpture.

What matters to you the most as you approach the challenge of understanding another person?

I’m a medieval historian, that’s my background, and I’m looking for tiny clues that people might have missed. You have no idea how much I google, feeding in odd combinations like their name plus “cheese” or “umbrellas”, even though the obituary is only a thousand words and most of it will boil away.

I don’t have room to spell it all out; I have to brush it in like an Impressionist painter, as an adjective or the brand name of a cigarette. It’s an accumulation of details, where every little helps.

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