[continued from previous message]   
      
   With other Time Out colleagues, Duncan left in 1981 in protest against the   
   decision by Tony Elliott, the magazine’s owner, to abandon its equal pay   
   policy. He joined the breakaway publication, City Limits. That went on to fold   
   in 1993, unable to    
   withstand commercial pressures, but by February 1987 Duncan had already left   
   to join Robert Maxwell’s new and ill-fated publication the London Daily   
   News. When it collapsed in July the same year, he successfully applied to join   
   the Guardian.   
      
   After a spell on the news desk, he was appointed the paper’s crime   
   correspondent, a role that further established his name as the leading, most   
   authoritative, journalist on that beat. He was elected chairman of the Crime   
   Reporters Association and was    
   awarded the Bar Council’s newspaper journalist of the year in 1992. In an   
   inspired move, Rusbridger appointed Duncan the Guardian’s Los Angeles   
   correspondent, from where he also covered South America.   
      
   He left the newspaper in 2010, but continued to be an active member of the   
   National Union of Journalists, alerting members to what he regarded as just   
   but neglected causes, including growing threats to journalists around the   
   world.   
      
   Just last year, welcoming the release of Julian Assange, the founder of   
   WikiLeaks, he wrote: “Why – why, for heaven’s sake – has it taken so   
   long? And what about all the others who languish in crazily overcrowded   
   British jails?” He went on to    
   pose the question: “Who cares about prisoners or the scandal  of those still   
   wrongly held under the discredited Imprisonment for Public Protection laws”?   
   He was meanwhile urging the Criminal Cases Review Commission to pursue the   
   murder conviction of    
   Wang Yam, a Chinese and former MI6 agent, in light of new DNA evidence. It was   
   an intriguing case on which I worked with him for several years.   
      
   Duncan’s sense of humour, his observations on the quirks and frailties of   
   the human condition, attracted him to the comedian Billy Connolly. A   
   relationship that Duncan valued deeply led to two book collaborations –   
   Billy Connolly: The Authorised    
   Version (1976), which became a bestseller, and Gullible’s Travels (1982),   
   about a Connolly tour of Britain in 1975, and, six years later, of the Middle   
   East.   
      
   His book That Was Business, This Is Personal: The Changing Faces of   
   Professional Crime (1990) was a series of interviews and profiles of   
   criminals, detectives, lawyers and others in the criminal justice process. The   
   Underworld (1994) was written to    
   accompany the BBC series on organised crime in Britain, with an updated   
   version published in 2019. His supreme talent at spinning a good tale, often   
   inspired by an unrivalled knowledge and experience of shady and not-so shady   
   worlds, was brilliantly    
   reflected in two novels – The Paradise Trail (2008) and If It Bleeds (2009)   
   – and in We’ll All Be Murdered in Our Beds, subtitled The Shocking History   
   of Crime Reporting in Britain (2016).   
      
      
   Duncan’s calm, modest nature, and consideration for others – rare   
   qualities in the world of journalism – attracted a wide circle of close   
   friends. After his best friend died young, Duncan immediately took his   
   daughter, Lorna Macfarlane, under his    
   wing and made her his ward.   
      
   One of his friends observed that Duncan’s natural curiosity about people and   
   life around him meant that he would often be the most knowledgable person in   
   the room, something he wore lightly and with great humility. He was quietly   
   charismatic, and able    
   to navigate class divides in the world of criminal justice. His Scottish   
   background and roots helped him remain something of an outsider in his   
   professional life, independent of any particular circle or club. He was still   
   writing articles aged 80 with    
   the same zest and passion he had displayed throughout his professional life;   
   social justice and human rights were at the heart of most of his   
   investigations.   
      
   A gifted, funny raconteur, he entertained friends and colleagues with   
   anecdotes, including as a cricketer. He was a key member of the New Statesman   
   cricket team in the 80s, a side made up of journalists, lawyers, actors,   
   cartoonists and others only    
   loosely connected to the magazine. A fellow member described him as a tidy   
   off-spinner and patient batsman, “utterly selfless as a player”, adding   
   that “his prime skill lay in using his inquisitive kindness, his empathic   
   soul, to magically fuse the    
   individuals, some of them socially awkward, into a team”.   
      
   Duncan was always aware of the outsider, and was quick – a fellow member   
   recalled – with a consoling quip and a pint at the bar after the game for   
   the wretch who had dropped that dolly catch or run out the star batsman. It   
   was as if he followed an    
   inner code of conduct known only to him; a code far subtler than the mere laws   
   of the game. He was the driving force behind six tours of India, including a   
   match against the Bollywood film industry side. In the world of football, he   
   was an ardent Arsenal    
   supporter through what a fellow supporter calls “the dour years of George   
   Graham to the fantasy era of Thierry Henry and beyond”.   
      
   In 2005, in India, Duncan married his longtime partner, the actor Julie   
   Christie. They met in 1978 at the Dingwalls club in Camden, north London.   
      
   She survives him, as do his sister, Fionna, and brother, Niall.   
      
   --   
   Colin Macleod ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ https://cmacleod.me.uk   
      
   Warning: Gumption level low, top-up when possible!   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)