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    Mike Peters, Frontman of the Alarm, Is Dead at 66

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    Leading the Welsh band known for 1980s anthems like “Sixty Eight Guns,” he later became a strong voice in the fight against cancer, which he battled for decades.Mike Peters, the frontman of the Welsh post-punk band the Alarm, which in the 1980s drew comparisons to U2 for its storm-the-barricades passion and its clarion-call anthems like “Sixty Eight Guns” and “Blaze of Glory,” has died. He was 66, having battled cancer over three decades and been a prominent campaigner against it.His death was confirmed in social media posts by his wife, Jules Jones Peters, who did not say where or when he died or specify the cause.Mr. Peters was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1995 and twice with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, in 2005 and again in 2015. Both are forms of blood cancer. Last year, on the eve of a 50-date U.S. tour, he discovered that he had Richter’s syndrome, a more aggressive form of lymphoma.Starting in the 2000s, Mr. Peters took on a second career as a prominent spokesman in the fight against cancer. He helped found the Love Hope Strength Foundation, which has staged concerts in dramatic locations like Mount Everest and Mount Fuji to raise funds for cancer research and treatment.The Alarm in 1982, from left: Nigel Twist, Mr. Peters, Eddie Macdonald and Dave Sharp. Emerging from Britain’s punk underground of the late 1970s, the group was known for its electric-shock hairstyles as well as its righteous fury.Erica Echenberg/Redferns, via Getty ImagesEmerging from Britain’s punk underground of the late 1970s, the Alarm, known for their righteous fury and electric-shock hairstyles, fused the high-octane energy of punk with a distinctive twin-acoustic-guitar attack while firing off musical fusillades like “Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke?,” “Spirit of ’76” and “The Stand.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Under the Hollywood Spotlight, a Fading Welsh Town Is Reborn

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      A former industrial hub, Wrexham had long been in decline. Now, it’s reviving as the globally famous star of a reality series about its once forlorn soccer team’s rejuvenation.In the Welsh language, the virtually untranslatable word “hiraeth” (pronounced here-ayeth) describes a blend of nostalgia and longing for a time that can never be recreated.For Wrexham, a working-class town in northern Wales, it was a feeling that came to define a postindustrial malaise that descended in the 1980s as the last remaining coal mines shuttered their rickety gates and, later, the furnaces at the nearby steelworks ran cold.Only the beloved soccer club, Wrexham A.F.C., remained: the oldest team in Wales, a perennial also-ran but still an indomitable source of local pride.“We went through so much as a town,” said Terry Richards, 56, a lifelong fan of the club as he sat at home in the team’s bright scarlet jersey. “Those were difficult times.”Wales has its legends of heroes returning to save the day, but few could have predicted that an unlikely pair of Hollywood actors, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, would waltz into town just over two years ago and buy the ailing club. That set off a chain of events that catapulted the town out of the doldrums and into the international spotlight, casting the residents as the main characters in their own Hollywood reality show based around the soccer club, “Welcome to Wrexham.”Few could have predicted that the two famous actors would walk into the town in the first place. But Mr. McElhenney, an American who had binged on sports documentaries during lockdown, conducted an exhaustive search for a down-and-out soccer team with growth potential, landing on Wrexham A.F.C., and persuaded Mr. Reynolds to join him in his pet project.Players from Wrexham A.F.C. practice at the Racecourse Ground while crews from the documentary series “Welcome to Wrexham” film them.Mary Turner for The New York TimesAfter paying the bargain sum of around $2.5 million, they moved into town (the Canadian-born Mr. Reynolds even bought a house) and began overhauling the team’s operation. They revitalized the training facilities and upgraded the roster, offering comparatively enormous salaries that attracted established players from the upper levels of English soccer.Last Saturday, that Hollywood story finally got its very own Hollywood ending — the team’s promotion after its winning season into the English Football League, the next tier of England’s multilevel soccer pyramid, after a 15-year absence. As the referee blew the final whistle, generations of teary-eyed supporters leaped from the stands onto the rain flecked field in joyous celebration.In that moment, a town was reborn, and that lingering “hiraeth” was no more. More

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      in Movies

      Dobby’s Grave Can Stay on a Beach in Wales, but Please Stop Giving Him Socks

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      After a grave site for the “Harry Potter” elf became a tourist attraction, tributes to the character prompted environmental concerns.LONDON — In one of the more tragic moments from the “Harry Potter” series — spoilers ahead if you’ve been meaning to get around to it for a decade or two — Dobby, an elf, dies in Harry Potter’s arms on an expansive beach that the creature describes, in one of his final breaths, as “such a beautiful place to be with friends.”The “beautiful place” where the scene was filmed for the 2010 movie “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” was Freshwater West Beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where fans have assembled a memorial to Dobby, a recurring character in the series who befriended Harry and his fellow wizards-in-training and became a fan favorite. Environmental officials, however, became concerned that the site’s popularity with tourists was having a negative effect on the beach and considered tearing the memorial down as part of an eight-month review.Last week, Dobby’s grave site won a reprieve, when officials announced that it could stay, as long as visitors stopped leaving behind tributes to Dobby — or, from a different perspective, environmentally ruinous litter.Dobby, who is voiced by Toby Jones in the “Harry Potter” movies, in a scene from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.” Warner Brothers Pictures“The memorial to Dobby will remain at Freshwater West in the immediate term for people to enjoy,” the National Trust Wales, the conservation charity that initiated the review of the area, wrote in its assessment. “The Trust is asking visitors to only take photos when visiting the memorial to help protect the wider landscape.”Part of the problem arose from a gesture many fans most likely intended as a tribute but had damaging consequences: People kept giving Dobby socks.In the “Harry Potter” series, Harry tricks Dobby’s master, the evil Lucius Malfoy, into giving his captive elf a sock, which frees Dobby. The elf then wears the sock until his dying moment, making it a memorable symbol of his friendship with Harry.Back in the real world, socks are a bad thing to leave on a beach. Many have been left at the grave site along with messages painted on rocks to match Harry’s final tribute to his friend: “Here lies Dobby, a free elf.”The National Trust Wales said in its assessment that “items like socks, trinkets, and paint chips from painted pebbles could enter the marine environment and food chain and put wildlife at risk.” Tens of thousands of people visit the beach each year, the trust said, and more than 5,000 responded to an online survey as it sought the public’s opinion on the future of the site.“While we’re delighted that so many want to visit, we have to balance the popularity of the site with impacts on the sensitive nature of the beach and wider environment, and pressure on the facilities and surrounding roads,” Jonathan Hughes, an official with National Trust Wales, said in a statement. More

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      in Movies

      Anthony Hopkins Accepts Oscar, Paying Tribute to Chadwick Boseman

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      “At 83 years of age I did not expect to get this award,” Hopkins said of his best actor win in a video posted early on Monday morning.About four hours after he won best actor at the 93rd Academy Awards in an upset, Anthony Hopkins delivered his acceptance in a video from Wales, taking a moment to acknowledge the actor who had been widely expected to win posthumously, Chadwick Boseman.“At 83 years of age I did not expect to get this award — I really didn’t,” said Hopkins, who won for his role as a patriarch struggling with dementia in “The Father.”On Sunday night, Hopkins became the oldest actor to win the award, almost three decades after his first Oscar win in the category, for “The Silence of the Lambs.”The award provided a strange ending to the ceremony. When Boseman was awarded a Golden Globe for best actor earlier this year, the emotional acceptance speech given by his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, was the emotional highlight of the night. Perhaps with that in mind, the Oscars switched the traditional order of categories this year so that the best actor award came last, after the best picture had already been awarded.Boseman, who had been widely expected to win, did not — and Hopkins was not present to accept the award in person or virtually, resulting in a stilted, anticlimactic ending.Chadwick Boseman, in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”David Lee/Netflix, via Associated PressSocial media erupted with indignation at the win, with many saying the award should have gone to Boseman for his role in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Boseman died of colon cancer at age 43 in August, months before “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was released.“I want to pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman who was taken from us far too early,” Hopkins said in his video, which was posted to social media.Posted in the morning in Wales, the video was short and sweet, with Hopkins thanking the typical cast of characters in the caption to his Instagram post: the film’s production company, his talent agency, his family.“Thank you all very much,” Hopkins said. “I really did not expect this.” More