Obituary: Roland Dallas

Dallas, pictured, died on Saturday at a care home in Dorking, Surrey run by the Journalists’ Charity, where he had been resident in recent years. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

His wife Rita told friends: “We lit candles and played beautiful music. The sun was shining and there was a little party in the gardens, with children playing. We opened the garden doors to let the sunlight in and held his hands as he slipped away.”

Michael Reupke, Reuters’ former general manager and editor-in-chief, said: “He was a much loved and highly respected colleague. In the past few years he spent in Pickering House, the care home run by the Journalists’ Charity, he was deeply admired by the other residents and in particular the staff for the great courage and toughness he showed in enduring and suffering his final illness. Despite it he was able to bring a smile to others’ faces and he cheered everyone by playing his collection of CDs of great classical music.”

Dallas joined Reuters in New York in 1963 after studying at Oxford and Cornell universities and the Columbia university graduate school of journalism. Following a year with the Worcester Telegram in Massachusetts he worked in Reuters’ New York bureau and two years later moved to the United Nations.

During his years with Reuters Dallas reported from many news centres, mainly in Europe and the Americas, including Mexico City, Washington, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Libya, Rome, Madrid and Lisbon. In Buenos Aires, where he was assistant manager for Latin America, he and Patrick Crosse were involved in setting up Agencia Latinoamericana de Información (Latín), created by Reuters in January 1970 as a regional news agency in a joint venture with leading Latin American newspapers. It closed in May 1981. Reuters then distributed its Spanish services in Latin America under its own name.

Later Dallas worked for The Economist and was editor of its confidential newsletter, Foreign Report. He was the author of a biography, King Hussein: The Great Survivor, published in 1998. The title was changed to King Hussein: A Life on the Edge when the Jordanian monarch died a few months later.

There will be a memorial service at St Bride’s, the journalists’ church in Fleet Street, later this year.

Obituary in The Economist ■