Arthur Spiegelman

Many tributes here and elsewhere have referred to Arthur’s artistry with words and Brian Bain recalls his kindly nature. He was a giant, as Brian says, and a gentle one at that. His way of dealing with conflict was to defuse the tension with ingenious humour. In New York in the late 1970s he was hauled before the boss at 1700 Broadway, Mel Beiser, to be rebuked for some now unremembered misdemeanour. Art’s riposte was to crawl under the boss’s desk and refuse to come out until the shouting stopped. Employee relations manuals didn’t teach managers what to do in the face of such imagination. ■