Anthony Grey, Reuters journalist held captive in Mao’s China, dies at 87

Reuters: In his first job interview with Reuters, Anthony Grey was asked why he wanted to cover international news. To be mixed up in important events, he said.

His wish would come true – to a ruinous degree.

Three years later, in 1967, Grey – by then the agency’s Beijing correspondent – became a pawn in a drawn-out feud between China and the United Kingdom. After the crown colony of Hong Kong arrested communist reporters, Chinese authorities retaliated by placing Grey under house arrest.

The Briton’s ordeal would last some 26 months – and make him famous around the world.

Finally set free in October 1969, he told the press: “I felt very, very low many times. But I didn’t despair.”

Grey would go on to work for the BBC, write several popular novels and set up a charity to assist other state hostages.

He held no bitterness towards his former captors. The trauma of solitary confinement nonetheless lingered his entire life

Grey, who had Parkinson’s disease, died on October 11 in Norwich, England, his daughters Lucy and Clarissa Grey told Reuters. He was 87 years old.

A RESTLESS CHILD

Anthony Keith Grey was born on July 5, 1938, in Norwich, the second child of driver Alfred Grey and shopkeeper Agnes (née Bullent).

Raised by Agnes after his parents’ divorce, Grey was estranged from his father for most of his life. An athletic pupil who excelled in English, he was once described by a friend’s mother as “restless”. He wore the epithet with pride.

After leaving school at 16, he did national service with the air force in Glasgow. Concerns that he would eventually require glasses prevented him from becoming a pilot.

Grey harboured another hope: to write fiction. But he sensed that he should first find out more about life. He chose journalism.

In 1960 he joined Norwich’s Eastern Daily Press newspaper, where he overlapped with Frederick Forsyth, who died earlier this year, opens new tab. Both reporters later joined Reuters, before writing novels.

The news agency first posted Grey to East Berlin, ahead of which he took German lessons in London with a teacher called Shirley McGuinn. She would eventually become his wife.

From his base in Berlin, Grey travelled to Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Poland. On several occasions he was followed, and questioned, by Soviet agents, he said. Among his accomplishments: breaking the news that a prisoner exchange was in the works to free Gerald Brooke, a British lecturer held captive in Russia, years before the exchange finally took place.