Richard Wigg obituary

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.

Richard had a good grasp of languages and a thorough sense of European history combined with a vigorous prose style. In 1959 he was engaged by the Times newspaper as its correspondent in Bonn. Richard admired the way that the West Germans were recovering from the second world war and promoting local culture, especially in music and the arts.

While in Bonn he met Mercedes Vegas, an academic archaeologist from Barcelona. They shared interests in music, art and European literature and they eventually married in Barcelona in 1967. By then Richard was a foreign correspondent in Latin America, based in Chile, Santiago and Buenos Aires; it was the era of Guevara, and Richard covered, among other stories, the imprisonment in Bolivia of the French philosopher Régis Debray.

The following year Richard moved to Paris, where he wrote about the oil crisis. This was followed by postings to Madrid and then India.

After his retirement in 1993, Richard and Mercedes lived between Barcelona and Blackheath, in London. His lively mind was ready for research and he set himself to find out how the Spanish dictator Franco held on to power after 1945.

He spent his time digging in libraries, archives and diaries, and interviewed anyone with specialist knowledge. Churchill and Spain is a splendid piece of narrative, and reveals Churchill’s part in Franco’s survival. In Richard’s own words: “Churchill was a great war leader but no friend of Spain.”

All his life, music was a consolation and a stay for Richard. He is survived by Mercedes.