When I went to Hong Kong in 1993 to run the regional news desk, one of my first steps was to go through the drawers and cupboards to take stock of what was there.
At the bottom of a pile of dusty, yellowing papers, I found a clipboard which contained a nine-page explanation of cricket for HK's American deskers.
The ancient document had originally been pounded out on a typewriter and photocopied and rephotocopied many times, bore coffee stains and jotted-down phone numbers, and over the years had acquired the seer, venerable feel of mediaeval parchment.
You could hardly imagine a more helpful or more exhaustive guide to cricket. With charm and patience, it explained, for people brought up on baseball, the meaning of a googly, a leg before wicket, the difference between a bye and a leg bye, a wide and a maiden over and all the other crazy complexities of the game. The author -- of course -- was Peter.
I pick on this anecdote to provide just a tiny illustration of this man's extraordinary energy, his commitment to excellence and his love of journalism. Today, he leaves a legacy as broad as it is deep. AFP has a growing stature in the world, and the English service in Asia is one of its crown jewels. All of us benefit from this success. Let us praise the man who lay its foundations, bulldozing through innumerable obstacles and facing entrenched interests with courage and tenacity.
There was also Peter's inner life, and those of us who caught a glimpse of it came away enriched by his unfailing fairness, his humour and his discreet but deeply-felt acts of humanism. He was a one-off.
Richard Ingham
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