Gerry Loughran

Gerry Loughran was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England in 1935, trained as a journalist on local newspapers and traveled to Kenya, East Africa in 1960 at a time when many British colonies were securing their independence. After four years as an editor with a newly established independent newspaper group, Nation Newspapers, he returned to London and joined the international news agency, United Press International.

There followed 18 years as a foreign correspondent, initial desking work in London followed by bureau chief duties in Beirut, Paris and Moscow, leading to the position of foreign news editor at the company headquarters in New York.

After six years, the lure of Africa took Loughran back to the Nation in positions of senior editorial and personnel responsibility which included reporting assignments in Uganda, South Africa, Zambia and Tanzania.

When the owner of the Nation group sought to improve coverage of the developing world, Loughran set up and ran Compass News Features, working from Luxembourg and London, until his retirement in 2000. His final journalistic project was to write the history of his African company, Birth of a Nation: The Story of a Newspaper in Kenya, to mark the group's 50th anniversary in 2010.

In addition to his co-authorship of The Man Who Killed Apartheid, Loughran has published two volumes of short stories, one, The Leopard's Reward, prompted by his African experiences, as well as a memoir of his life and times, How Long Will You Be Staying?

He lives in retirement in his home town in the north of England.