Allan Maitland
Allan Maitland
Monday 19 December 2011
I remember Allan Maitland when I came out to Portugal to cover the Revolution in 1974. He had been there for two years and promised to introduce me to all the contacts I would need. We sat for a whole lunch waiting for the Government Information Minister to turn up, and on our way back saw The Minister’s name on the wall of the Ministry with the slogan “saneado” – purged. He was on his way to Brazil. Exciting times, and Allan took it all with the deceptively relaxed and debonair ease of a Graham Greene character. During Portugal’s colonial war, he found himself in the depths of Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau), a white man’s grave if ever, visiting a Portuguese military base in a place called Xitole. Which, as it promptly occurred to him, is pronounced in Portuguese just like the English word shithole. It was to his everlasting regret that the guerrillas failed to lob a few shells into the camp during his stay, depriving him of the pretext to file a dispatch from such an august dateline. Allan was a kind character, the unruffled epitome of the foreign correspondent of yesteryear. He will be missed.
Marcus Ferrar
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Marcus Ferrar
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Allan Maitland
Sunday 18 December 2011
Allan Maitland was one of the first Reuters people I got to know well at the start of my 22-year career. Allan was assigned to be one of the main “minders” for the company’s first graduate management trainee group intake in 1980, of which I was one. He exuded warmth and integrity, impressing us wide-eyed trainees with his adventures in Vietnam as a correspondent. I imagine nowadays far fewer ex-Reuters journalists land up in Staff Department, as it was called in those times and which had more than its fair share of characters. I kept my own counsel at the time. Being a very green trainee, Allan’s introduction to some of the unwritten, informal rules of Reuters’ corporate culture was invaluable. A true gentleman.
Mervyn Levin
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Mervyn Levin
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Allan Maitland
Wednesday 14 December 2011
I join Len Santorelli in his sadness. Allan Maitland was the man who held my hand when I received my first posting as country manager in Portugal during the revolution in 1975. I sadly have just sent him an Xmas card and was awaiting his annual one to me. Allan always sent charity Xmas cards featuring cartoons by Giles, long dead cartoonist of the Daily Express. The money from the cards went to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the cartoons featured lifeboats and funny crews at Xmas time. He obviously supported them because he loved sailing.
Malcolm Bain
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Malcolm Bain
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Allan Maitland
Tuesday 13 December 2011
I was saddened to learn of Allan’s death. I worked with him on Reuters World in the late 1980s and got to know him as a friend. He was a Reuters man of the old school, thoroughly professional, unruffled by crises, with prodigious knowledge about the company and its people. It was typical of him to make light of coming under a Viet Cong attack while covering the Vietnam war in 1969 – “one just got on with it”. But for the gentle, self-effacing man that he was, he had a wicked sense of humour when the occasion arose.
His big passion was sailing and he often crewed for his old Reuters mate Bill Humphries aboard Bill’s vintage wood-and-brass yacht Dorothea on trips across the channel and around the Mediterranean. His other obsession was the, surprisingly, vicious game of croquet and he was an accomplished player at tournaments in the Hurlingham Club. He remained in good spirits during his long illness and even in his final time in hospital was cracking jokes and asking for news about the latest shake-up at Thomson Reuters. Our deep sympathy goes out to Mignonne and all his family.
Len Santorelli
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His big passion was sailing and he often crewed for his old Reuters mate Bill Humphries aboard Bill’s vintage wood-and-brass yacht Dorothea on trips across the channel and around the Mediterranean. His other obsession was the, surprisingly, vicious game of croquet and he was an accomplished player at tournaments in the Hurlingham Club. He remained in good spirits during his long illness and even in his final time in hospital was cracking jokes and asking for news about the latest shake-up at Thomson Reuters. Our deep sympathy goes out to Mignonne and all his family.
Len Santorelli
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