Funeral of Chris Catlin

Chums I spotted at the church included Jim Anderson, Krishna Biltoo, Bill Creighton, who had flown in specially from Virginia, Paul Iredale, Tom Kirkup, Richard Pascoe and Jeremy Toye.

David Rogers delivered the eulogy.

The crowd of mourners reflected the range of Chris's career (Reuters 1969 to 1994) as well as his local commitments including Stamford School governor.

Chris was a fine reporter and linguist who switched to sales and admin, then quit and discovered he had a good a talent as a journalism trainer (I can certainly vouch for that) first with the Reuters Foundation and then more lucratively on his own account, gave that up to become features editor of a leading shooting magazine (shooting was his passion), wrote a novel, Brudersuche, which was published in Germany and finally launched himself as a book editor and publisher in his own right.

His third cook book was on the stocks when he died of a heart attack on 12 February at the age of 62.

He left a wife, Shirley, son Alex and daughter Jenny and will be missed by an awful lot of people. ■