OLD AZURIANS

Arthur John Osman, always known personally and professionally as John, was born in Durrington on 3 July 1929. After early education at Durrington primary school he joined Worthing High School as a Viking in 1939, matriculating in 1945. He was one of the few Old Boys still remaining who were evacuated from Worthing during the Second World War, and shares his memories of that time on the HISTORY page.

 

From 1945 to 1949 he was an apprentice junior reporter with the Brighton Evening Argus, and other Brighton-based newspapers. In 1946, at the age of 17 he won the Ford Madox Ford national essay competition for junior reporters. The Worthing Herald had the privilege of having this up-and-coming journalist on their staff as Sports Editor and general reporter between 1949 and 1951 before he moved on to the Bristol Evening Post for three years.

By 1954 he had entered mainstream journalism in Fleet Street as a general reporter with the Press Association News Agency. That was followed by nine years with the Daily Telegraph during which time he became a foreign correspondent, covering the Cyprus emergency through 1958 and the flight of the Dalai Lama across several countries in the following year.

 

John had his first brush with dictatorships when, as Telegraph Middle East Correspondent, he established himself and his family in Cairo after the Suez confrontation. President Nasser eventually declared John to be a prohibited immigrant. During his time as Middle East correspondent John travelled widely gathering material for what was to become an acclaimed Sunday Telegraph series of articles on slavery. Evidence exposed by John of 300 slaves sheltering in an embassy in Jeddah led to Saudi Arabia outlawing slavery.

 

John then spent 22 years as Staff Correspondent for BBC Radio, TV and World Service, visiting about 100 countries between 1965 and 1987. The events John reported over this period are numerous and  world-changing. To single out but a few, he reported on the illegal declaration of independence in Rhodesia, the admission of Communist China to the UN Security Council, the start of the Watergate affair that brought President Nixon down, Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians, and the pre- and post-independence struggles in Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, the Congo, Namibia, Somalia, and Ethiopia. He was arrested, detained and deported on at least two occasions.

 

John was BBC correspondent in Moscow throughout the period that saw the aged members of the Politburo dying off one by one and the eventual rise to power of Gorbechev. While based in Moscow,  Osman incurred the displeasure of the Soviet authorities by disclosing that there had been collusion between the Soviet Union and the then white-ruled South Africa on precious metal and diamond prices and narrowly escaped being treated as an “imperialist agent”.

 

The last four or five years of his career with the BBC (1983-1987) were as Diplomatic and Court Correspondent during which time he followed the Queen, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. It seems that this, perhaps more than the multitude of other experiences he had encountered, made him realise that, unlike Her Majesty, he had the choice of opting out from travelling to places he did not really want to go to and meeting people there that he did not really want to meet. So he finally resigned and took advantage of his newly found freedom to spend more time with his family, skiing (until he was 83), climbing (but now just walking) mountains, and sailing in the sunshine. He still occasionally does some freelance writing and contributing to obituaries when requested.

 

ED - I do not know how he found the time to do it, but since his retirement John has written an autobiography which has now been published. Having been privileged with a view of the draft Foreward to this book, I am sure it will make absorbing and thought-provoking reading.