newsDerek Ingram (1925-2018) – A gentleman journalist known around the world as ‘Mr Commonwealth.’
Derek Ingram outside his home in Marylebone . He was a keen gardener right until the end (Picture: Trevor Grundy)
Derek Ingram would have turned 100 on June 20. As his thousands of friends and colleagues around the world all know – he was one of the Commonwealth’s ‘greats’ – a man of dignity, integrity and ability who changed the lives of so many young men and women anxious to become journalists but without training or the financial resources to get them started.
By TREVOR GRUNDY
SO MUCH has been written by members of the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA) about Derek’s achievements there is no need to repeat any of them here.
Anyone who was active in Commonwealth affairs knows that his lovely mews house in Marylebone was a sanctuary for CJA members on the run from tyrants in their own countries.
Just one paragraph from the obituary written about Derek Ingram by his friends and colleague Richard Bourne is enough.
In a special edition of a CJA magazine published soon after Derek’s death three days before his 93rd birthday, he said-
“Many of us remember Derek for his kindness, hospitality and sense of humour. An ambassador for an expert on the Commonwealth, he was not uncritical, seeing a want of ambition in officials, a penny-pinching approach by leading governments and a failure to fight for human rights. A tall tree has fallen in the forest.”