PAGE, Martin 1938-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born June 30, 1938, in London, England; died September 10, 2003. Journalist and author. Page was a respected foreign correspondent for the Daily Express who turned to freelancing and writing books when his eyesight failed him in later years. A graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he earned a B.A., he first joined the staff of what was then the Manchester Guardian as a graduate trainee in 1960. Two years later, he moved to the Daily Express, where he worked as a foreign and then diplomatic correspondent. As a reporter, he took on assignments in Algeria, Zaire, Borneo, India, Moscow, and Vietnam, covering wars, revolutions, and other political upheavals. As early as his late-twenties, however, an untreatable retinal condition, which led to his becoming legally blind by 1988, was noticeably affecting his eyesight, and he had to abandon his work as a traveling journalist. Turning to a life as a freelancer in 1965, he wrote for British newspapers and, for five years, edited the Business Traveller. But he also gained recognition as an author of nonfiction and fiction, including The Day Khrushchev Fell (1965), The Lost Pleasures of the Great Trains (1975), The First Global Village: How Portugal Changed the World (2002), The Good Doctors Guide, and the novels The Pilate Plot (1978) and The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa (1984).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Guardian (London, England), September 25, 2003.

Times (London, England), September 16, 2003.