Douglas Stuart, a long-serving foreign correspondent and presenter of The World Tonight, died on July 13th, 2013.  This is the Times obituary:

DOUGLAS STUART
Published at 12:01AM, August 22 2013
Much-travelled BBC journalist who reported on JFK’s assassination and later became the first presenter of The World Tonight

Douglas Stuart was a distinguished foreign correspondent for BBC radio during the 1950s and 1960s, reporting in a clear, precise and authoritative voice from postings in Delhi, Bonn and Washington, before presenting The World Tonight from its inception.

He was born in Calcutta in 1918, the son of a merchant. He was educated at Harrow and won an open scholarship to read modern history at New College, Oxford, but his studies were interrupted by the war.

He was commissioned in the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, and after being wounded and captured on the beaches at Salerno he spent the rest of the war in prison camps, first in Czechoslovakia and then Brunswick, Germany. After the war, through a family friend, Hugh Carleton Greene, the future BBC Director-General, Stuart joined the BBC German Service as a reporter. In 1949 he was appointed BBC correspondent in Delhi, where he struck up a rapport with India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, a fellow Old Harrovian, and they sang Harrow songs together.

From Delhi he moved to Bonn, covering the early years of the West German republic, and in 1956 was posted to Cairo just as the Suez crisis was breaking. When Egypt became too dangerous, he covered the Middle East from Beirut. Here he met Kim Philby, who was working for The Observer and The Economist. Philby had been suspected of being the “third man” in the Burgess and Maclean spy ring and was initially wary of Stuart, who he thought might have been there to flush him out. In fact they became close friends, playing bridge and drinking together. Stuart remembered Philby as a good talker but having a bad stutter.

From 1958 to 1960 Stuart was based in Vienna, chiefly to cover the Eastern Bloc countries, before landing the foreign correspondent’s most prized posting, head of the BBC Washington Bureau. He arrived as John F. Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency, reported from Guantánamo Bay during the Cuban missile crisis and on JFK’s assassination.

In 1966 he returned to Britain and was appointed assistant head of programmes for BBC Scotland, based in Glasgow. But administration was not for him. In 1970, when the BBC launched a new programme on radio of news and current affairs, The World Tonight, Stuart became its first presenter. He recalled: “The World Tonight concentrated on reflecting the interviewee, so I made my questions very short. This made the interviewee the centre of the listener’s attention, which is why I signed off as ‘Douglas Stuart reporting’.” The World Tonight made a point of covering international news, which was Stuart’s forte, but going out at 10pm it was often able to carry live votes from the House of Commons.

In the second week on air Stuart interviewed the astronaut Walter Schirra about the Apollo 13 mission to the Moon which had to be aborted after an oxygen tank exploded.

In September 1970 President Nasser of Egypt died and the entire programme was devoted to him. Stuart interviewed the former Foreign Secretary, George Brown. “He had had too much to drink,” said Stuart. “My first question was answered by a gigantic sneeze and then silence.”

Stuart’s favourite headline was inspired by the state visit to Britain in 1978 by the Romanian communist leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, who stayed at Buckingham Palace with his entourage. Stuart was able to say: “So, in tonight’s programme, there are reds in the beds at Buckingham Palace.”

He continued to present The World Tonight into the 1980s, when he was forced to retire by ill-health.

He is survived by Margaret, his wife of 73 years, two sons and a daughter.

Douglas Stuart, BBC radio journalist, was born on August 18, 1918. He died on July 13, 2013, aged 94

The "Daily Telegraph" has an obituary for Douglas here.