The death has occurred of Australian journalist Murray Sayle (1926-2010) whose reports from Japan I particularly remember.   Harold Jackson has an amusing reminiscence of their time together in Prague, in the immediate aftermath of the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, here.   In addition to enjoying his writing, I always felt a personal link to Sayle, in a 6-degrees-of-separation way:  he was a school-friend of my late headmaster Colin Meale, who introduced me to the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich.   As I recall, Col did not much like the music of his younger brother Richard, though.

Col’s fast-witted son Tony I remember here.