Scope and Contents James Kirkup obituary (published in The Independent) of Maurice Roche born Clermont-Ferrand, France 2 November 1924; died Sevres, France 19 July 1997. To be born on the Day of the Dead might seem to presage a gloomy future. Maurice Roche, unique among contemporary French writers, who was born on that fatidic date, refused to acknowledge the coincidence as an omen of catastrophe. He spent much of his life making a mock of mortality. His irreverent spirit took a macabre delight in deriding those who took death seriously. He would quote "The Latest Decalogue" by that disabused Victorian Arthur Hugh Clough, with whom he had much in common: Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive Officiously to keep alive. Derision was his only defence against a life he despised. Roche spent the war as a student in Lyons, then moved to Paris to start work as a journalist on Ce Soir (1946-48). Like almost every young man with literary leanings, he founded a short-lived magazine, Elements, in 1951. He...