Section:GDN 1J PaGe:8 Edition Date:190730 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 29/7/2019 17:55 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Tuesday 30 July 2019
8
Dame Ingrid Allen,
neuropathologist,
87; Paul Anka,
singer, actor and
songwriter, 78;
Jennifer Barnes,
musicologist,
59; Prof Stephen
Blackmore,
botanist, 67; Peter
Bogdanovich,
fi lm director,
80; Sir Peter
Bottomley,
Conservative MP,
75; Peter Bowler,
cricketer, 56; Kate
Bush, singer and
songwriter, 61;
Teresa Cahill,
opera singer, 75;
Alun Cairns, MP
and secretary of
state for Wales,
49; Hannah
Cockroft,
paralympic
athlete, 27;
Kenton Cool,
mountaineer,
46 ; Kerry Fox,
actor, 53; Sofi e
Gråbøl, actor, 51 ;
Harriet Harman,
Labour MP, 69;
Prof Sir Laurence
Martin, historian,
91; Stephen
Moss, journalist
and author, 62;
Christopher
Nolan, fi lm
director, 49 ;
Terry O’Neill,
photographer,
81; Dame Sonia
Proudman, high
court judge, 70;
Jason Robinson,
rugby player,
45 ; Justin Rose,
golfer, 39; Arnold
Schwarzenegger,
actor, 72; Sir
Clive Sinclair,
inventor, 79 ;
Daley Thompson,
decathlete, 61;
Frances de la
Tour, actor, 75;
Christopher
Warren-Green,
violinist, 64.D
uring the
dark days of
the military
dictatorship in
Argentina in
the 1970s , there
was only one
newspaper that
dared to publish the names of the
“disappeared” – let alone to put
them every day on the front page, as
Andrew Graham-Yooll did as news
editor of the Buenos Aires Herald.
Graham-Yooll, who has died aged
75, nearly paid with his life for such
audacity. In 1976 h e and his fi rst
wife, Micaela Meyer, got out just
in time – “out of the back door and
straight to the airport”, as he put it –
as the men in the black Ford Falcons
came looking for him. He never
wanted to go into exile but had
little choice other than to resettle in
London until the generals – “those
bastards” as he referred to them- were removed from power by a
combination of the Falklands war
and economic incompetence.
His best and most acclaimed
book, A State of Fear: Memories
of Argentina’s Nightmare (198 6),
was about those years of the
1976- 83 military dictatorship,
and was described by Graham
Greene as a masterpiece. It is
Andrew Graham-Yooll
Journalist and author
determined to report on the
‘disappeared’ of Argentina
ing rapid promotion under the
editorship of Bob Cox. After a military
coup in 1976 brought the generals
to power, b oth men came to the
attention of the rightwing junta for
their reporting of a growing wave of
“disappeared” – around 30,000 men
and women of the left who went
missing without notice during what
became known as “the dirty war”.
As the military refused to give
any account of these executions- the bodies were often dropped
into the River Plate from planes – it
needed courage and persistence to
cut through the offi cial version that
many of these victims had gone
into hiding or fl ed to Europe. But
Graham-Yooll always played down
the idea that he and his colleagues
at the Herald had been fearless in
putting names into print. “Of course
we were afraid ,” he said, “ but it’s
one thing to be afraid and another
thing to be a coward.”
After escaping to London he was
given a job by the Telegraph and then
was able to return briefl y to Buenos
Aires in 1982 as a correspondent for
the Guardian, covering the Falklands
war. Despite having what he thought
was journalistic immunity, he was
assaulted one night by members of
the security services when walking
near the Torre de los Ingleses (now
Torre Monumental) in the city.
He continued to write as a free-
lance for various British news-
papers, and became editor of the
international magazine South in
- He was also closely involved
with the freedom of speech organis-
easy to see why Greene liked it so
much. Over 12 discrete episodes
Graham-Yooll captures the surreal
nature of the confl ict and the
accommodations that a journalist
has to make when there are no
frontlines , only backrooms: tea
with a rightwing torturer who made
chilling confessions; a clandestine
encounter with a leftwing guerrilla
on the run. She tells him, bitterly,
while pointing a gun at him : “You’re
in the middle, but not neutral; you’re
right in the middle of this mess ” –
and then takes her clothes off.
In London Graham-Yooll contribut-
ed to several newspapers and then
found he could reinvent himself as a
writer, and the books started to fl ow.
In 1994 he returned to Argentina
permanently, becoming editor-in-
chief of his old paper.
Graham-Yooll was born in Buenos
Aires and grew up in the suburb of
Ranelagh , as part of the English-
speaking community , the son of an
English mother, Inés (nee Tovar),
and a Scottish father, Douglas
Graham-Yooll, who had emigrated
from Leith in 1928. After a turbulent
childhood – Inés died when he
was fi ve and Douglas when he was
19 – Andrew joined the Buenos
Aires Herald, Argentina’s English -
language newspaper, in 1966, achiev-In the mid-1970s
Graham-Yooll,
who had been
working on the
Buenos Aires
Herald, had to
fl ee to London
after being
pursued by the
Argentinian
security services
LUIS GRAHAM-YOOLLation Index on Censorship, along
with Stephen Spender , and edited
its magazine from 1989 to 1993.
He wrote more than 30 books in
English and Spanish. Before A State
of Fear he had produced Small Wars
You May Have Missed (1983), an
attempt to educate an anglophone
public about the history of South
American confl icts, many of which
Britain had played a key role in
instigating. He also proved himself
to be a historian, a poet and a fi ne
literary critic: his book After the
Despots: Latin American Views and
Interviews (1991) is one of the best
works on South American magic
realism writers.
In 1992 Graham-Yooll went to
Buenos Aires to make a BBC fi lm
about Argentina during the junta era,
called War Stories, which I directed
and so came to know him. His spell in
the country suggested that conditions
were now propitious , so he moved
back full-time, soon becoming editor-
in-chief and then president of the
board at the Buenos Aires Herald,
where he worked until 2007.
A quiet, modest and self-
deprecating man when speaking
English, he could become far more
passionate in Spanish: I once saw
him cry when he was listening to
Carlos Gardel’s tango anthem Volver ,
not least because its lyrics about re -
encountering a fi rst love after many
years of absence were so apposite
to his own return to Argentina. On
another occasion he took me to an
alley behind the Hurlingham club in
Buenos Aires, where the bodies of the
disappeared had once been dumped,
and expressed the slow-burning
anger about those events that had
stayed with him for the rest of his life.
In 2002 he was appointed OBE.
He is survived by his second
wife, Maria (nee Niero), whom he
married shortly before his death, his
children, Inès, Luis and Isabel, from
his 1966 marriage to Micaela , which
ended in divorce in 1999, an adopted
son , Matias , seven grandchildren
and his sister, Joanne.
Hugh ThomsonAndrew Graham-Yooll, journalist
and author, born 5 January 1944;
died 6 July 2019Birthdays
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Of course we
were afraid, but
it’s one thing to be
afraid and another
thing to be a coward [email protected]
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