When, in 1976, John Midgley was awarded the CBE for telling readers of The Economist about the United States, he took particular delight in the fact that he went by bus from work to accept the decoration from Queen Elizabeth (who was staying in Blair House in Washington), and was in and out quick enough, drinking up a gin and tonic without a stop, to use the transfer ticket to go out to dinner. He was a print hack all his life, spending freely on fun and friends, but never bothering to make his name known or his wallet fatter, with books or broadcasting. The possessor of free intelligence, he was not on a soap-box, or concentrated on influencing the great and good, though he got their attention just the same. His job, he once said, 'was to assist the reading public to understand what was going on'. He conveyed his liberal view of the world with great clarity but 'if you can't give [people] useful information, you can shut up'. He finally did shut up, just before Christmas. Midgley, born in the working-class north of England in 1911, was in military intelligence during the Second World War, trying to work out Germany's intentions. He then turned to journalism, dodging for a time between The Economist, the (then) Manchester Guardian and the Times. as leader writer and foreign correspondent. In 1956 he landed on The Economist and, luckily for us, stayed there, until and beyond his retirement, contributing a book review days before he died. He was foreign editor for seven years, pulling foreign coverage together in (his own words) 'a reasonably satisfactory manner'. He was a brilliant, scary teacher to a classroom of aspiring hacks, not lazily rewriting their pathetic stories but throwing them back to be redone, with advice that bums to this day. He also less brilliantly, sent Kim Philby, whom he had known at Cambridge, to string for the paper from Beirut. until the spy's mask fell off and he fled to the Soviet Union. In 1963, after a bit of an upheaval at The Economist, he went off to be Washington correspondent and, from then on, everything fell into place. He excelled at his job, lucidly explaining American affairs even to Americans themselves as well as to the rest of the world. He married Elizabeth. a producer at CBS, and they looked after each other with love and wit. Their house in north-west Washington was a warm and lovely meeting-place. His was a good life, the second half especially. John Midgley was NOT fond of______.