Vale Colin Chapman FAIIA

Colin Chapman, former Australian Outlook columnist, world renowned journalist, tv presenter, and author passed away this weekend. He was an erudite and careful thinker whose insights will be deeply missed.
Many of us at the Australian Institute of International Affairs were sad to hear the news of the death late last week of Colin Chapman FAIIA. His loss is felt even more deeply by those of us who worked with him as commissioning editors of Australian Outlook. Colin’s most recent title was editor-at large and in this role many of you will have read his monthly columns on elections being held around the world in 2024, as well as a monthly column on the major strategic issues the world is currently facing. We have all been beneficiaries of Colin’s wise interpretation of events and the research which he undertook in putting these columns together. In this enterprise he was aided by his wife Susan Grice, to whom we are also grateful.
Colin was involved with Australian Outlook from its inception late in 2013 when he was president of AIIA NSW and a member of the national executive (now the board) of the AIIA. He retired as NSW president and as a commissioning editor at the end of 2014, but later rejoined the committee in 2017 when he was made a fellow of the AIIA.
Colin was born in the UK in 1937. He studied at the University of Leicester where he obtained an MA in Mass Communications. His interest in international affairs then started when he completed three years of journalism training at the Eastern Daily Press, one of Britain’s leading regional newspapers. He had been the top candidate in the UK in the National Council for the Training of Journalists final exams, and won a travel prize. He chose to go to Tito’s Yugoslavia, a communist country that was fiercely independent of the Soviet bloc, and spent his time investigating Belgrade and Novi Sad, a city twinned with Norwich, the base for his first newspaper.
Colin’s international media career went on to span three continents and encompassed roles as an accomplished writer and broadcaster, as well as in senior management. In fact, as he wrote himself, “there will not be many journalists who have been both writers and executives in the print media, and also on-camera performers and senior managers in radio and television.” Internationally he worked for the Financial Times, The Times, the Sunday Times, The Observer, the Washington Post and BBC T.V. During his first stint in Australia, he spent two years as assistant editor of The Bulletin magazine while also writing for the New York Times. In his second stint he worked as assistant editor of Australian Consolidated Press’s Australian Business magazine, followed by two years as deputy editor of The Australian newspaper, and three years as executive producer of the ABC’s PM and joint founding producer of The World Today.
Over the years Colin was an active participant in leading global meetings, including those organised by the World Economic Forum (Davos), the Ditchley Foundation, Oxford Analytica, and the United Nations. There were not many places in the world that he did not visit in the search of a story. An undated cutting from the Sunday Times sent to me by the Secretary of AIIA NSW, Jennifer Sayle, shows a photo of a young Colin Chapman with the words: “Colin Chapman, Foreign News Editor of the Sunday Times of London, has, in the last twelve months, reported on bomb terrorists in Hong Kong, Israeli jet attacks on key Egyptian oil refineries in Suez, a publishing scandal in Ghana, and the capture by Federal Nigerian troops of Port Harcourt. He was the first British journalist to become a Winston Churchill Fellow.”
Reading a six-page potted history of his life, which Colin once sent to me, I am struck by the diversity of his career. In 1974 he became economics correspondent for the BBC. He wrote that “The BBC encouraged me to interpret economics very broadly, to include the relevant commissions of the EEC in Brussels, OPEC and the OECD, and the activities of the World Bank and International Money Fund, as well as coverage of the City of London and business large and small…..In my second year I was described as “the success story of BBC News” by the editor. In my fourth year I was seconded to the BBC Current Affairs group to become presenter of the BBC’s high profile “The Money Programme,” a weekly, and on three days presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Financial World Tonight. The former gave me the opportunity for the first time to make long form documentaries ……memorable ones include three weeks in Iran during the last days of the Shah, when revolutionaries turned the oil tap off, two weeks in the Urals in Brezhnev’s Russia when I filmed at Lada’s Togliati car plant looking at Soviet industry through the conflicting eyes of a left wing shop steward and a yuppie manager from British Leyland, who we took with us. There were also films in India, Greece, South Africa and Japan.”
Over the years Colin also wrote several books, including August 21: the Rape of Czechoslavia (1968), How the Stock Market Works (nine editions), Selling the Family Silver: the Story of Privatisation and (with George and Meredith Friedman) The Intelligence Edge.
Colin spent three periods of his life living in Australia and became a proud Australian citizen. His last stint began in 2004 when he wrote that “he returned home to Australia” and became the Sydney based vice-president, Asia-Pacific, for Stratfor, an American geopolitical intelligence company in the private sector. It was during this time that he became involved with AIIA NSW where he spent two years as treasurer followed by four years as president. Our personal friendship started then via our membership of the AIIA national executive (board) and became stronger over the years, partly via our shared vision for Australian Outlook.
In 2011 Colin and Susan were participants in a study tour to Vietnam organised by AIIA Victoria. I remember at the time that Colin was working for Stratfor and he and Susan set up a tripod outside Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum where Colin started to record a report for Stratfor. Les Rowe and I, as tour leaders, were rather concerned that his visa may not cover such activity and that the local authorities may well make life difficult for Colin and perhaps us all, but luckily there were no repercussions. By the end of the tour Colin and Susan had become friends with many of us from AIIA Victoria. Friendships were rekindled in 2012 when they joined the AIIA Victoria Study Tour to China. Later that year Colin led an AIIA NSW study tour to Christchurch and Wellington in which I and several other AIIA Victoria members participated.
In 2018 Colin and Susan decided to move back to the UK to be nearer to family, but he remained closely involved with Australian Outlook—often attending meetings in the middle of the night UK time. If he couldn’t do this he would provide us with a list of issues that we should be addressing, accompanied by a thoughtful analysis of how he saw things. During this time Colin and Susan bought a holiday house in Portugal and last year they decided to sell the house and garden near Norwich and move permanently to Tavira, near Faro, in the south of Portugal.
Colin’s physical health deteriorated over recent years. Even so, and despite being legally blind, and later enduring dialysis three times a week, he kept on going, using every bit of modern technology to help him absorb what was going on in the world.
Australian Outlook was fortunate to have someone of Colin’s calibre and experience, both an editor and contributor. He brought a global and an Australian perspective to his analysis of events and a journalist’s eye to what was really important. The many articles which he has written recently for Australian Oultook are worth re-reading for those who have the time.
Dr Heather Smith, national president of the AIIA, recently wrote to Colin on learning of his retirement as editor-at-large. She concluded with the words “Thank you, Colin, for everything you have done for the AIIA and for your invaluable role in building Australian Outlook into the voice of the institute it is today. Your legacy will long be remembered by all of us”
Vale Colin Chapman.
Zara Kimpton OAM FAIIA is national vice president of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, a former president of AIIA Victoria, and in 2023 was made a fellow of the AIIA. She has been a commissioning editor of Australian Outlook since it’s inception.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.