Peter Preston

Peter Preston, who died on Saturday, had a wry sense of humour. In 1992 he and I attended the annual conference of the International Press Institute (IPI) in Budapest, he as Editor of The Guardian and I as former General Manager of Reuters. We went for a coffee. When the bill came he said “I will take that. The Guardian owes a lot to Reuters.” It did indeed. The Guardian group’s share of the proceeds of the flotation of Reuters on the stock exchange in 1984 had been £5.1 million. ■