This week: an elephant conservationist, an Italian film-maker, and a blind runner

DAME Daphne Sheldrick, who has died aged 83, was a prominent conservationist and campaigner who dedicated her life to the protection of African elephants and was responsible for saving the lives of at least 230 of them.

Married to David Sheldrick, the man who founded Kenya's biggest national park, Tsavo East, Dame Daphne specialised in saving orphaned calves often after their mothers had been killed by poachers. It was not an easy process and Dame Daphne spent many years trying to develop a substitute for elephant milk, eventually landing on a formula containing coconut oil.

Born in what was then British colonial Kenya in 1934 to a British father, Dame Daphne spurned a university education to work in conservation. Following her husband's death in 1977, she established a trust in his name, which campaigns for wildlife and habitat protection in Africa.

In 2016, Dame Daphne warned that if ivory poaching continued at its current rates, African forest elephants could be extinct as soon as 2025.

She was awarded an honorary doctorate in veterinary medicine and surgery by Glasgow University in 2000 and was made a Dame by the Queen in 2006.

A statement by The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust said Dame Daphne had died of breast cancer. It said: "Her legacy is immeasurable and lives on in the tiny steps of baby elephants for generations to come."

THE Italian film director Vittorio Taviani, who has died aged 88, created - along with his brother Paolo Taviani - masterpieces of the Italian cinema that claimed top honours at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals.

The Taviani brothers were in their early 80s when they won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2012 for the documentary Caesar Must Die, which showed inmates of a high-security prison staging the Shakespearean tragedy. At the time, Taviana said he and his brother wanted to remind audiences that "even an inmate ... remains a man".

The brothers' first big success came in 1977 when they won the Palm d'Or at Cannes for Padre padrone, about a shepherd in Sardinia who sought to escape his domineering father by educating himself. The brothers first came across the real-life story in a newspaper article and then a book. "It seemed right away to us a beautiful story, a story to make," Tsuraviani once said. "We felt united with this story."

The brothers were born in San Miniato, Tuscany. Asked once if they ever fought, Vittorio responded: "Of course. But not on set. When we play tennis."

In addition to Paolo, 86, Vittorio Taviani is survived by a son, Giuliano Taviani, a composer who collaborated on Ceasar Must Die.

THE athlete Rob Matthews, who has died aged 56, was a paralympian who defied his blindness to win eight gold medals for Britain in seven Paralympic Games and break 22 world records in middle and long-distance running. He also became the first blind runner to complete the 800m in under two minutes.

Matthews lost his sight in his early twenties as a result of retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye condition he inherited from his father. He often said it was athletics and running that helped him come to terms with such a devastating disability so early in his life.

By the mid-1980s Matthews, who trained and competed with guide runners, was beginning to dominate middle distance running at the Paralympics - between 1984 and 2000 he won eight Paralympic gold medals in 800m, 1500m and 5000m. He also competed against sighted athletes.

He was awarded an MBE in recognition of his sporting achievements.