Hundreds of people gathered today to pay their respects to Kim Sengupta, The Independent’s World Affairs Editor who died last year.
Family, friends and journalists filed into St Bride’s Church on Fleet Street to say a fond farewell and hear the stories of his life as recalled by those closest to him.
Kim, 68, died suddenly at home and tributes poured in from journalists, military generals and MPs, including Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
Geordie Greig, The Independent’s editor-in-chief, had known Kim for more than 40 years and described his fearlessness in reporting in conflict zones around the world, including Syria, Libya, Syria, Turkey, Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti and Sri Lanka.
“Kim wriggled across frontiers, skidded toward danger, dodged bullets, avoided capture, interrogation and incarceration,” he said in his address. “Also – he avoided editors, he really didn’t like being in the office.
“He was most comfortable on the road. The thrill of the chase, the freedom of a journey, in pursuit of testimony and truth through the prism of reportage; a journalist addicted to the front line.
“A fearless observer and questioner with a gregarious and chucklesome presence, he excelled as a raconteur as well as a war correspondent who eyed up and then took calculated risks. Always trying to bring clarity to areas of confusion, darkness, and danger.”
Greig recounted stories of Kim’s charm and his determination to always speak to people on the ground to find out what was really going on.
“The first draft of history comes through reportage, sustaining and explaining those whose stories must be told. The oppressed. The undertrodden. The civilians at war. The wounded. The grieving. The plotters, planners, pilots, spooks, marksmen and defenders, the witnesses and participants in conflict. Being there matters. Kim was always there.”
Christina Lamb, chief foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times, joined Lindsey Hilsum, international editor at Channel 4, to give a shared tribute, both describing Kim’s kindness and humour as they covered the darkest of news events in the most dangerous of circumstances.
Lamb said: “Kim was the only journalist that whenever I arrived somewhere and he had got there before me, I was happy because I knew I would have good company, someone to have dinner with over a glass or three.
“Personally I can’t imagine going anywhere and him not being there. I remember diving behind a car in central Harare as Mnangagwa’s thugs started shooting and of course who was there but Kim, calm as ever.
“’We’re getting too old for this,’ he said.”
Hilsum, who worked alongside Kim in multiple war zones, told how she had gone back through the messages she and Kim had exchanged on Whatsapp and his humour and understated take on the world shone through.
“Kim was always there,” she said. “We are a small, strange travelling circus, we journalists who go to conflict zones. Kim was the heart of us. The very centre. I can’t imagine what it will be like to go back to Ukraine or Israel and he won’t be there.”
As part of the service, a collection was taken for the Friends of Aschiana, which supports a school for children in Afghanistan.
