Much-loved Asian chronicler leaves a colourful legacy

The spluttering chuckle of Austin Coates, author and one-time colonial administrator, will never again be heard at alcohol-filled, rambling Saturday lunchtime sessions in the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Lower Albert Road. This much-loved chronicler of Southeast Asia and the Pacific died on March 16.

Coates was not to be seen much in Lower Albert Road this past four years or so: he had transferred his permanent home, insofar as he ever had one, to his villa just outside Lisbon in Portugal where he had long been a familiar, even venerated figure.

He would have liked that word 'venerated'. Years ago, Coates seemed to have decided that the pose of an elegant, elderly gent, a venerable gentleman, suited him best.

He was 75 when he died, but with his silver hair and swagger cane, he had looked like that for the past 20 years.

Perhaps there is a clue to why he did this in his first ambition as a young man. He desperately wanted to be an actor and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) for two years. His father, Eric, was the composer of popular classics like the Knightsbridge and Dambusters marches.

Perhaps RADA would have approved of his portrayal of the author as an old man.