died of heart failure and arteriosclerotic heart disease on 15 October 1988 at the age of 96. He was cremated in Bournemouth Crematorium on 24 October, and the funeral service took place in Corfe Castle in the Church of St. Edward, King and Martyr, on the same day. His remains are buried in "God's Acre", the Corfe Castle cemetery. Personal life Myths and reputation During Sorabji's lifetime and since his death, myths about him have circulated. To dispel them, scholars have focused on his compositional method, his skills as a performer, the dimensions and complexity of his pieces and other topics. It has proven to be a challenging task: while nearly all of Sorabji's known works have been preserved and there are almost no lost manuscripts, few documents and items relating to his life have survived. His correspondence with his friends is the main source of information on this area, though much of it is missing, as Sorabji often discarded large volumes of his letters without inspecting their content. , the author of Sorabji's first biography, Opus sorabjianum, writes that "there are years for which hardly anything can be reported". Sorabji peddled some myths himself. He claimed to have had relatives in the upper echelons of the Catholic Church and wore a ring that he said had belonged to a deceased Sicilian cardinal and would go to the Pope upon his death. The villagers in Corfe Castle sometimes referred to him as "Sir Abji" and "Indian Prince". Sorabji often gave lexicographers incorrect biographical information on himself. One of them, Nicolas Slonimsky, who in 1978 erroneously wrote that Sorabji owned a castle, once called him "the most enigmatic composer now living". Sorabji's mother had long been believed to have been Spanish-Sicilian, but the Sorabji scholar Sean Vaughn Owen has shown she was born to English parents christened in an Anglican church. He found that she often spread falsehoods and suggested this influenced Sorabji, who made a habit out of misleading others. Owen concludes that despite Sorabji's elitist and misanthropic image, his acquaintances found him serious and stern but generous, cordial and hospitable. He summarises the tensions displayed in Sorabji's reputation, writings, persona and behaviour thus: The contradictions between his reputation and the actuality of his existence were known to Sorabji and they appear to have given him much amusement. This sense of humour was detected by many in the village, yet