My friend Richard Wigg, who has died aged 91, was a distinguished foreign correspondent for the Times for 27 years, reporting from all over the world including West
Germany, South America during the Che Guevera era, and Madrid. His book, Churchill and
Spain (2005), reveals the large part Winston Churchill played in the survival of the Franco regime in Spain after the second world war.
Born in
London to Lewis Wigg, a bank manager, and Gladys (nee Perry), Richard was educated at Eltham college, south-east London. At 18 he was called up for national service and spent two years “protecting the empire”, as he called it. The troubles that he witnessed, first in Israel, then in Kenya, turned his mind to journalism. After three years studying philosophy, politics and economics at Exeter College, Oxford, graduating in 1951, he began work on the Glasgow Herald newspaper.