People Remembered: Murray Sayle

Murray Sayle in Nepal before joining a 1971 Everest expedition.

From The New York Times: “Early in his tenure at The Sunday Times of London, Murray Sayle reported on the escape of an eagle from the London Zoo by following the bird around Regent’s Park on a bicycle. It was a minor story in a major journalistic career, but it suggested Sayle's inventive and audacious approach to his job: he would go anywhere and get there by any means necessary.

“He reported on an ascent of Mount Everest by joining the expedition. He reported on a trans-Atlantic race for solo sailors by entering it. He chartered a plane to locate the yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester as Sir Francis sailed around Cape Horn in his attempt to be the first solo circumnavigator of the globe. He tramped into the Bolivian jungle in search of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, and he found Kim Philby, the British agent who had defected to the Soviet Union, in Moscow”.

Murray Sayle, 84, an Australian correspondent who reported from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America, died September 19 in a Sydney nursing home. After reporting for the Sydney Daily Telegraph and writing a column for the Sydney Daily Mail, Sayle moved to London in 1952 and worked on Fleet Street. Over the next years, he was an Agence France Press correspondent in Paris and Geneva; a correspondent for The Times of London and the Sunday Times in Vietnam, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, India-Pakistan and Bolivia; Asian editor of Newsweek; and a freelancer in Japan. In frail health from Parkinson’s disease, he returned to Sydney in 2007. Sydney University, where Sayle attended but never graduated, awarded him an honorary doctorate.

In a tribute to Sayle, OPC member Don Kirk wrote, “I went with him on numerous stories out of Saigon. He wrote about 2,000 words every Friday for the Sunday Times of London, loved to talk to anyone and everyone, exchange tales and information. Then he shifted to Japan, where he wrote for the Sunday Times and numerous others, including The New Yorker and the Atlantic. A couple of memorable pieces had to do with Hiroshima and the shoot down of KAL 007 by a Soviet fighter plane. Murray and his wife Jenny, whom he met when she took dictation from him on short-wave calls as he was traversing the Atlantic in a sail boat for the Sunday Times, lived with their three children in a farmhouse south of Tokyo.

Murray's novel Crooked Sixpence [about an Australian correspondent in London] was republished a couple of years ago and is available now. Jenny had a lot to do with Murray's survival as a free lance in Japan. She taught English, helped support the family during Murray's ups and downs as a freelance. Those who worked on stories with Murray may remember his interviewing style -- he did most of the talking, telling garrulous stories, interspersed with caustic remarks, occasionally let the interviewee interrupt with a comment.”