Forum for former BBC staff

Forum for former BBC staff
http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> Notices, obituaries and tributes >> Anthony Lawrence http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1380209951 Message started by Administrator on Sep 26^th, 2013, 3:40pm

Title: Anthony Lawrence
Post by Administrator on Sep 26^th, 2013, 3:40pm

The BBC Media Centre has issued the following press statement:-

"It is with great sadness we can confirm that former BBC Correspondent Anthony Lawrence has died at the age of 101.

Anthony was the BBC’s Far East Correspondent from 1957-1975 and during that time covered some of the biggest and most difficult stories from the region, including the communist insurgency in then Malaya, China's Great Famine, as well as reporting from the front line of the Vietnam War.

He was one of the world’s most admired foreign correspondents.

BBC Director General, Tony Hall, said: “Anthony was among the most courageous and tenacious journalists, widely admired for his talent and charm. He was part of a great generation of foreign correspondents who helped build the BBC’s reputation around the world."

Title: Re: Anthony Lawrence
Post by Administrator on Sep 26^th, 2013, 3:47pm

"The Daily Telegraph" has a tribute Antony Lawrence.

"Although Lawrence flirted with television, he was first and foremost a radio, or, as he would have politely preferred, a wireless broadcaster. For two decades he was the voice of the BBC in the Far East, first in Singapore and then, definitively, in Hong Kong.
He was the least pushy or self-publicising of men and partly because of this he never achieved the fame of such colleagues as Alastair Cooke, yet he was as consummate a professional as any of his generation...

Even in his nineties he marched with hundreds of thousands in sweltering heat to protest against the post-British government’s attempts to introduce legislation limiting freedom of expression. He also spoke memorably — and as usual without notes — to a rapt audience at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in order to explain why, despite his advanced age, he had finally decided to spend his final years in his beloved Hong Kong rather than the Britain of his birth and upbringing.
Anthony Lawrence was appointed OBE this year.""

Title: Re: Anthony Lawrence
Post by Administrator on Sep 26^th, 2013, 3:57pm

Bob Chaudry has written a tribute to Anthony for "The Guardian".

"Lawrence retired from the BBC in 1973 and helped to establish the Hong Kong branch of the charity International Social Services, which provides help across borders for such groups as refugees, asylum seekers and torture victims. As a tribute to his work, the organisation named one of its refuges after him. He was also a founder member of Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondents' Club and served for a period as its president.".

Bob's tribute to Anthony may be found here.

Title: Re: Anthony Lawrence
Post by Administrator on Oct 7^th, 2013, 5:47pm

David McKittrick obituary for Anthony may be found in "The Independent", here.

"When war broke out Lawrence joined up, becoming a captain in the Royal Artillery. At war's end he was assigned, due to his journalistic experience, to a unit instructing German journalists how to set up new, denazified, publications. During this work he fell for a young German girl, Irmgard Noll. Demobbed in 1946, he married her and spent an uneventful decade working as a sub-editor in a BBC newsroom before being offered the post of Far East correspondent."