Manfred Pagel - a brave, decent man

I’m glad that so many remember Manfred as a kind and generous editor. That was my experience, too. In 1983 he told me to my enormous shock that he was sending me to Poland, then a communist country still reeling from the suppression of the mass patriotic trade union movement Solidarity under martial law. I was just 23 at the time. But Manfred had faith in me, and that move to Warsaw was the start of my lifelong career devoted to central and eastern Europe. Manfred also came to Warsaw and spoke up on my behalf in a tense and unpleasantly threatening conversation with the communist government spokesman Jerzy Urban. RIP Manfred - you were a brave, decent man. ■