If you describe someone's behaviour as maniacal, you mean that it is extreme, violent, or very determined, as if the person were insane. adj. (disapproval) He was almost maniacal in his pursuit of sporting records..., She is hunched forward over the wheel with a maniacal expression.
It was his way of telling his friend he knew he was dying. It was his way of saying good-bye to him. In May of this year Gary Cooper, 60, died of cancer. Hemingway was too ill to attend the funeral, although he was an honorary pallbearer. Less than two months later, 62-year-old Papa, despondent and depressed by Coop's death, shot and killed himself.
Dudley Philby, known to friends as Tommy, is the third of the spyâs five children, all by his second wife, Aileen. Neglected by her husband, Aileen died of respiratory failure in 1957 at the age of 47. Tommy and his siblings were soon to lose their father, too.