Sir Geoffrey Cox dies age 97

Sir Geoffrey Cox, one of the greatest foreign correspondents of the 1930s, died in Britain this week. The New Zealander started out as a correspondent at 26 years old. He covered the Spanish civil war and the Nazi invasion of Austria for the News Chronicle and the Daily Express. He went on to found the recently revived News At Ten programme on ITV. He was knighted in 1966. Writing in The Independent Michael Fathers remembers an incident during the run up to World War II,

As Paris correspondent of the Express from 1938 he covered all the major events in Europe leading up to the Russian invasion of Finland and the defeat of France in 1940. Annoyed by Cox’s anti-appeasement views, Beaverbrook originally wanted him out and ordered him back to London. At a meeting in 1938 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris between His Lordship and his correspondent, Beaverbrook listened to Cox’s plea to stay and issued one of Fleet Street’s more infamous memos, to the editor of the Express. With Cox listening he spoke into the trumpet of his dictation machine: “Message for Arthur Christiansen. Cox does not want to be a leader writer (in London). Better let him ride,” After Cox had thanked him and left the room, Beaverbrook added another sentence: “Sack him within a month”. link