{"id":626676,"date":"2026-09-16T18:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T18:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/626676\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T18:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T18:28:12","slug":"bonnie-greer-writer-and-cultural-commentator-dies-aged-77-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/626676\/","title":{"rendered":"Bonnie Greer: Writer and cultural commentator dies aged 77 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The British-American novelist, playwright and commentator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/bonnie-greer-ireland-needs-to-understand-the-world-is-changing-1.4785704\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/bonnie-greer-ireland-needs-to-understand-the-world-is-changing-1.4785704\">Bonnie Greer<\/a> has died aged 77.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In a statement, her husband David Hutchins said that she died on Tuesday evening following a brief illness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Greer\u2019s \u201cintelligence, courage and distinctive voice made an enduring contribution to British cultural and public life\u201d, said Hutchins. \u201cTo me, she was my partner, confidante and inspiration, and I feel profoundly privileged to have shared my life with her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Born on November 16th, 1948, Greer moved from the US to the UK in 1986, and became a citizen in 1997.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Greer\u2019s work \u2013 which often focused on the lives of minorities, and of women \u2013 spanned novels, nonfiction, plays and broadcasting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Her first book, Hanging By Her Teeth, published in 1994, was a novel about a black American woman travelling through the US and Europe in search of her father. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Her later books included Obama Music (2009), about her and the former US president\u2019s connections to Chicago\u2019s South Side, and Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction (2011), a biography of the Harlem Renaissance figure. In 2022, she was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/bonnie-greer-ireland-needs-to-understand-the-world-is-changing-1.4785704\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bonnie Greer: \u2018Ireland needs to understand the world is changing\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Greer regularly appeared as a panellist on BBC\u2019s Newsnight Review and Question Time. She served on the boards of Britain\u2019s Royal Opera House, the British Museum and the London Film School, and was chancellor of Kingston University, London.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Hutchins said that \u201cthose closest to Bonnie will remember her warmth, humour, generosity and extraordinary ability to bring people together\u201d. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British-American novelist, playwright and commentator Bonnie Greer has died aged 77. In a statement, her husband David&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1578,93,61,60,125724],"class_list":["post-626676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bbc","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-women-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}