Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s former partner, Rachel Owen, died Sunday (Dec. 18) at 48 following a battle with cancer.
A celebrated scholar and artist, Owen was a retained lecturer in Italian at the University of Oxford’s Pembroke College. She continued to teach as her health declined during the past year.
Owen was an expert in medieval Italian literature and a renowned artist and printmaker. One of her last works, a series of prints inspired by the cantos of Dante’s first book of The Divine Comedy, will be exhibited at Pembroke’s JCR Art Gallery.
While Owen and Yorke were together for 23 years, she lived a private life and was rarely seen in public with the singer. The couple had two children together — a son, Noah, and a daughter, Agnes, age 15 and 12.
Their August 2015 separation heavily influenced Radiohead’s latest album, A Moon Shaped Pool.