Bernard Edinger
Gilbert Sedbon laid to rest in Paris
Thursday 30 June 2011
Former correspondent Gilbert Sedbon, who served Reuters for 48 years, was buried near Paris on Thursday in the presence of former colleagues who together represented an aggregate of several centuries’ service to Reuters. Some had been managers for entire continents; others had stayed in the Paris bureau throughout their careers as invaluable office assistants, Bernard Edinger writes. All were linked equally by their affection for their former colleague, who died on Saturday aged 94.His widow Yolande, sons Eric and Thierry and their families were joined by Reuterians who had worked with Gilbert: Jack Altman, Nguyen Khac Dung, David Lawday, Julian Nundy, Stephen Somerville, John Stephens, Paul Taylor, Ngo Thao, Pierre Tran and yours truly. Taylor attended both as a friend and as Thomson Reuters' representative. Also present were other journalists like Jonathan Randall of The Washington Post who had been close friends of Gilbert as well as of other Reuters correspondents in Paris and elsewhere.
The funeral service, at the Cimetière Parisien de Pantin, was conducted by Rabbi Michael Williams, British head of one of the best known Jewish Reform congregations in Paris.
This reporter, entrusted by the family with speaking on behalf of Gilbert’s former colleagues, recalled some of his legendary exploits such as the time he held up the Vietnam peace talks in Paris in the early 1970s. Ultra-conscientious as he was, Gilbert had entered the conference hall before the start of one day’s proceedings to check seating arrangements because changes sometimes indicated important diplomatic developments.
Spotting a text on an empty table, he scooped it up and discovered it was an important statement scheduled to be made that day. Assuming it was an extra copy, he took it away and dictated a story to the Paris office for release once the statement was delivered. Meanwhile, delegates searched frantically for the document which turned out to have been the only existing copy of the statement.
Photo, left to right: John Stephens, Nguyen Khac Dung, Ngo Thao, Stephen Somerville, Paul Taylor, Yolande Sedbon and Suzanne Edinger shortly before the start of the service.
Obituary: Gilbert Sedbon
Sunday 26 June 2011
Gil, as his numerous friends knew him, had served Reuters for nearly half a century. It was an extraordinary career by one of the most endearing people to have worked for Reuters, an organisation to which he was entirely devoted.
Gil was born in Alexandria, Egypt, then under British rule, to a family of Tunisian Jewish origin and was therefore a French national, something of which he was intensely proud.
He joined Reuters in Alexandria at the age of 18 and according to Stephen Somerville, in his ● review of Gil’s memoirs “From the Nile to the Seine: The lifelong story of a reporter in wars, revolutions and peacetime” published last year, his first job was reporting cotton prices, the main source of Egypt’s wealth, for Reuters’ economic services.
World War Two gave him his chance to excel at reporting major international stories. One of the first was a wartime victory for secret diplomacy: a “gentlemen’s agreement” between British and French admirals to disarm Force X, the French naval contingent based at Alexandria, without bloodshed. An ingenious compromise, reached after tense negotiations, prevented the French warships from falling under German or Vichy French control. Gilbert pieced the story together from contacts he had made at the French Club Nautique in Alexandria. It made headlines around the world, long before the British government published the agreement.
A sadder story that Gilbert recalled reporting was the wartime death of his first boss, ● Alexander “Jock” Massey-Anderson, manager in Alexandria, who was covering the Eastern Mediterranean as a naval correspondent. He drowned after his ship was torpedoed just outside Alexandria harbour. Gilbert’s report, based on interviews with survivors, ran prominently in the British and Allied press.
“And so on, throughout the war and the troubled peace that followed, Gilbert pursues every story with the same enthusiasm and determination, as well as, by his own admission, an element of luck,” Somerville wrote. “His advice to newcomers to journalism is: ‘Chance often smiles on the reporter in the field – if he grabs it fast.’ His own natural curiosity and his ability to establish contacts at all levels were other key elements in his successive scoops. It was an anonymous contact who tipped him off by telephone to the Egyptian army’s coup d’état in 1952. International communications were immediately cut off but Gilbert managed to intercept the senior army officer who was about to broadcast news of the military takeover. The officer not only helped Gilbert to write an official English version of the Arabic announcement but then ordered the military censor to release his story, alone among the world news agencies. Gilbert had a global scoop plus a first rate contact: the officer was Colonel Anwar Sadat, later to become President of Egypt.
“The news story that changed Gilbert’s life for ever was the Anglo-French Suez Canal expedition of 1956, when most foreigners were ordered out of Egypt. Together with his 20-year-old wife, Yolande, and their baby son, Eric, Gilbert was given 48 hours to wind up the affairs of a lifetime and fly off into exile. After brief stays in Rome and London, Reuters posted him to Paris for three months. It proved to be his base for the rest of his long career. But that’s another story. Book Two of these memoirs tells how Gilbert turns his reporting talents to the Cold War, defence and the aerospace business, while his young family – with the addition of a second son, Thierry – settle down, overcome some tough times and make France their new home. Paying tribute to his wife, he says: ‘Yo deserves all the praise and more.’ From the Nile to the Seine, the whole book is an impressive testimony to a man’s passion for his profession and devotion to his family.”
After retiring from Reuters in 1983 as diplomatic correspondent in France, Gil continued to work as a stringer for British and Australian aerospace magazines, drawing on his multiple contacts in the aerospace industry.
The funeral is on Thursday 30 June at the Cimetière Parisien de Pantin, 164 avenue Jean Jaures, in Pantin, adjacent to Paris.
Bernard Edinger
