Ronald Farquhar

How sad that Ronnie has passed. I never made it to see him again since I retired to thank him for all his kind assistance at the time when I was growing up in Reuters. What a wonderful teacher he was: patient but yet persistent in getting the message across, priorities right. I still hear him say in his terse Scottish accent: “There is never a never. Try again and call every telephone number in the telephone book - someone in there must have witnessed the air crash.” That was in walled-in East Germany. And he was right!

Ronnie was essential in helping set up the German News Service in the early 1970s, exploiting our then exclusive presence in East Germany to give the new service extra value. He himself went from Bonn to East Berlin for the initial period, getting up in the middle of the night to catch an early edition of Neues Deutschland (the official mouthpiece of the communist regime) at the back entrance of the printing works - hours before it was officially available. Reuters and all the colleagues who had the privilege to work with him owe a lot. Thank you Ronnie! ■