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The author is Channel 4 Information’ Worldwide Editor
He was identified to tens of millions as a relaxed presence studying the information from a BBC tv studio in London, but when George Alagiah, who has died on the age of 67, needed to be remembered, it was for his reporting, particularly from Africa.
Because the BBC’s Africa correspondent within the Nineteen Nineties he chronicled the enjoyment and hope of the Mandela years in South Africa, and the agony of Rwanda’s genocide. He additionally reported from Kosovo and different conflict zones, successful a number of journalism awards and being appointed OBE in 2008. His means to stay dispassionate, whereas figuring out with the individuals on whom he reported, made viewers belief him. His pure empathy shone by means of.
Alagiah’s personal expertise as a migrant twice over earlier than the age of 12 knowledgeable his journalism, and in addition his sense of id. He was, as he put it, the BBC’s first “overseas correspondent and individual of color”, however by no means needed to be outlined by race. Anyway, it was difficult: he was a Sri Lankan Tamil, who spent a lot of his childhood in Ghana, and have become British.
Regardless of his personal experiences of racism, he had doubts about multiculturalism, which he blamed for some British immigrant communities’ failure to combine. In his memoir A Residence From Residence: From Immigrant Boy to English Man, he wrote: “In that tug of conflict between heritage on the one facet and assimilation on the opposite, I by no means actually had a lot of a selection. It needed to be assimilation.” His means to look at and adapt fed into his sense of humour — he was an incredible raconteur and gifted mimic.
In 1961, when Alagiah was six, his household left Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, for newly impartial Ghana, the place his father had a job as an engineer. Similar to his Ghanaian schoolmates, he felt himself to be certainly one of “freedom’s youngsters”, born within the heady days on the finish of colonial rule. “We have been caught up within the air of optimism,” he wrote.
A long time later, when he discovered himself reporting on the conflicts and corruption that plagued the continent, he wrote that he was “destined to spend my grownup life dispelling the goals I had nurtured so rigorously as a toddler”. The ache was private: “I belong to Africa; or a minimum of, a chunk of me does.” He left Ghana aged 11, wrenched from a contented childhood into the typically merciless world of a British boarding college.
Good-looking and clever, the one boy amongst 4 adoring sisters, Alagiah may need been unbearable — however he wasn’t. At Van Mildert School, Durham College, fellow college students throughout freshers’ week in 1975 discovered a stupendous younger man in an unbelievable maroon three-piece swimsuit sitting on the bar, speaking enthusiastically to all-comers. He shed the swimsuit, however by no means the connections — he met his spouse, Frances Robathan, at Durham and the 2 grew to become the centre of a college friendship group that has lasted to at the present time.
After working at South journal — the place he earned the sobriquet “Attractive George” — he freelanced from Zimbabwe. A colleague remembers him because the consummate dashing younger overseas correspondent, together with his Billingham bag slung over one shoulder. He joined the BBC in 1989. After a decade as a roving reporter, he and Frances and their two sons, Adam and Matthew, settled in north London. He began to current the BBC Six O’Clock Information in 2003, changing into its most important anchor in 2007.
A prognosis of stage 4 bowel most cancers in 2014 got here as a shock that Alagiah accepted with extraordinary grace. Having fun with the power of the newsroom, in addition to the assist of viewers who despatched him hundreds of messages, he labored for so long as doable. He wrote a thriller, set in South Africa. However his focus shifted. He revisited Sri Lanka, and spent as a lot time as doable together with his rising brood of grandchildren. On walks around the native park he would discuss actually to pals about mortality.
“I want I hadn’t had most cancers clearly, however I’m glad of the issues I’ve learnt about myself, my pals and my household consequently,” he stated in an interview. “I really feel richer for being a part of that group.”
Reflecting on his personal migrant story, he grew to become a trustee of the Migration Museum, and certainly one of his final initiatives was to boost cash for it to discover a everlasting dwelling. He felt grateful that he had the “luxurious”, as he put it, of making ready for dying. His BBC colleague and good friend Allan Little stated: “George taught us rather a lot about find out how to reside, however he additionally taught us find out how to die.”
After some 200 chemotherapy infusions and 5 main operations over 9 years, his physique might take no extra. He died at dwelling in Stoke Newington together with his spouse, sons and two of his sisters at his facet.
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