Britain's finest fim music composer passed away yesterday.

Composer John Barry, famous for his work on Born Free, Out of Africa and the James Bond films, has died in New York of a heart attack aged 77.

Born John Barry Prendergast in 1933, the York-born musician first found fame as leader of the John Barry Seven.

His arrangement of Monty Norman's James Bond theme led to him composing scores for 11 films in the series, among them Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice.

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Sir Tim Rice – who worked with Barry on All Time High, the song heard over the title sequence of 1983 Bond movie Octopussy – also cited the composer's roots, remembering the “slight Yorkshire tinge to his voice which he never lost”.

“Film seemed to bring out the very best in him,” he said of a man who “was able to catch the mood of a scene or a whole film by the genius of orchestration with fairly conventional instruments”.Continue reading the main storyHis work found a new audience when Robbie Williams featured music from You Only Live Twice on his 1998 hit single Millennium