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This is taken from The Guardian:
Keith Kyle A brilliant historian and writer, he made sense of the world for television audiences by Sandra Harris Tuesday February 27, 2007
Keith Kyle, who has died aged 81, was a distinguished historian and a prolific writer and broadcaster with an extraordinary capacity for making sense out of complex, politically sensitive scenarios. Those who watched him on the BBC Tonight programmes in the 1960s could not fail to be impressed by his broadcasts from Kenya and the Congo during the critical years of African independence.
He would stand there, in shirt sleeves, in the midst of a battle and explain who the protagonists were, what would happen next and why it was important to us - all with huge enthusiasm and expertise, waving his arms about and talking for at least five minutes without Autocue, notes or a clipboard in sight.
It was a gift Kyle seemed to have been born with. At Oxford, Dick Taverne, a fellow student and later his best man, recalled, "he was possibly the most naturally talented speaker of his generation." This in a field of undergraduates that included Robin Day, Shirley Williams, Bernard Williams, Margaret Thatcher and Kenneth Tynan.
None the less, most of his contemporaries believed Kyle was ideally suited to an academic career. He certainly looked the part. Unfailingly courteous, he combined intellectual brilliance with acute absent-mindedness and gentle eccentricity. He lost so many articles of clothing that his wife sewed name tags into his garments as if he was a schoolboy. Which, in a way, he always was; ever the enthusiast, he was determined to see, experience and report on world events for himself.
Born in Sturminster Newton, Dorset, and educated at Bromsgrove school, Worcestershire, he was an exhibitioner at Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1943, after two terms, he was called up to the army and served in Burma and India. He returned to Oxford after the war to complete his history degree and then became a talks producer for the BBC World Service. In 1953, he was head-hunted by Geoffrey Crowther, editor of the Economist, to become its Washington correspondent. He protested that he had never been to America or been a journalist, and was not an economist either. Crowther merely asked how long he would need to make up his mind. "About 30 seconds", was the response.
Kyle served in that position from 1953 to 1958, covering the emerging civil rights struggle in the south and the infamous McCarthy hearings. He got to know such diverse leaders as Martin Luther King, Richard Nixon, who did not impress him, and John F Kennedy, who did. JFK was senator for Massachusetts at the time. He invited Kyle to lunch and drove him some 30 miles out of town. "Unlike other politicians who might expect to be asked questions, he interrogated me ceaselessly throughout the journey," Kyle recalled, "keeping his eyes firmly fixed on my face and never once on the road. I presume he drove by peripheral vision."
By 1960, Kyle had moved into tele-vision journalism, where he became a leading figure, making sense of the rapidly unfolding events in Africa and earning the admiration of viewers and his peers. "His integrity as a journalist and as a person was, and is, absolute," wrote Sir Robin Day. "Few journalists of any medium have been so scrupulous with the truth." He went on to become a regular correspondent, covering such stories as Britain's hapless attempt to join the EEC, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the first years of the Irish troubles. He also, in 1962, met and married Susan Harper, a young television researcher.
Kyle would have relished the role of Labour MP, and stood unsuccessfully for parliament four times. This was before the Labour party had abandoned its opposition to Europe and the strong control of the trades unions. From the party's point of view, he was too liberal; a tragedy because he would have made a wise foreign secretary.
But there were already signs of a new direction in his career. In 1967-68 he was fellow of the John F Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard, to be followed, 20 years later, as senior associate member of St Antony's College, Oxford. In 1972, he joined the staff of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, or Chatham House, for which he worked for 30 years, with his interests turning increasingly to the Middle East. He travelled the world chairing conferences and formulating plans for the book that would guarantee his place as a historian of world importance. Suez, a magisterial work cataloguing the tragedy of 1956, took him just three years to research and write, and was universally acclaimed on its publication in 1991. It remains the definitive work on the subject.
In 1992 he became visiting professor of history at the University of Ulster, where his lectures were models of insight, elegance and wit. Further books included Whither Israel? (1993) and a new edition of his study of Cyprus, which had first appeared in 1984. He had a longstanding interest in Cyprus, attending conferences, writing articles - one comparing the island and Northern Ireland - and was until the end of his life an active committee member of the Friends of Cyprus.
He remained a passionate believer in the essential goodness of mankind, and spent much of the last six months of his life writing his memoirs, which despite being picked up with alacrity by his publishers he believed would be published posthumously. As usual, he was right. He leaves Susan and their two sons.
Godfrey Smith writes: Even among the torrent of ex-servicemen returning to Oxford from the war, Keith Kyle stood out. Six feet three, lean, vague, aquiline, scholarly, he looked like some benign bird of paradise that had wandered into the cloisters. An improbable former infantry captain, he came up to read history under AJP Taylor in 1947, and quickly made his name as a precocious Union speaker. He delivered his speeches - cogent, fluent and learned - without a note. He composed his own budget for fun each year just before the chancellor delivered his.
With his formidable intellect went a legendary absent-mindedness. On honeymoon with Suzy in Tanganyika, he was invited to dinner by the governor, and tucked into a large salad before realising, too late, that it was the governor's wife's floral arrangement. One ambassador was startled to get an ardent love letter from him, while Suzy received the serious political missive. At a house party, his hosts left him one night reading a book, and came down next morning to find him still immersed in it. He had forgotten to go to bed.
Left alone to contend with the humdrum imperatives of everyday life, he would have been lost. Suzy provided the serene haven he needed. Their house at Primrose Hill, north London, was the setting for many a convivial supper, where politicians, academics, broadcasters and writers gossiped and argued late into the night.
The glittering prizes we had hoped for him came his way too seldom. Yet he adorned the hinterland between political and academic life with total integrity and unconscious charm. He was devoid of guile and incapable of envy. It was a privilege to have known him; and what a pleasure.
· Keith Kyle, historian and writer, born August 4 1925; died February 21 2007
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