Remembering a journo like no other

Gwen Robinson was a quintessential journalist who spoke for the best sense and cried for the nicest gossip, an old-style old hand the likes of which we are unlikely to see again. In the new contentious era of geopolitical conflict and geoeconomic tension under-girded by American economic nationalism, Robinson’s journalist craft over more than four decades explaining and linking Asia and the West will be sorely missed.

- ABROAD AT HOME Thitinan Pongsudhirak

A past president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand and senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS Thailand) at Chulalongkorn University, Robinson was a friend, colleague and confidante to many from near and far across ages and places. After putting up a fearless fight against cancer like a war, she continued to do feverish pace of travels, talks and things in between — not letting it get her down and downplaying it to her friends and colleagues — she gave out at 65 without giving in. Her philosophy for life as she so aptly believed, was to go for it in abundant surplus to end up with the optimal maximum.

From 1985, her globetrotting journey took her from Sydney with the National Times newspaper to Manila, Bangkok and broader Southeast Asia, and then to Tokyo with Nikkei News and later The Times (of London). Her big break came in 1995 when she landed at the Financial Times where she stayed for nearly two long and illustrative decades, variously as correspondent and editor based in Tokyo, Australia, New York, Washington DC, and London.

By 2011, she became the FT’s bureau chief in Bangkok — where she had cut her professional teeth as a freelancer in the late 1980s — covering mainland Southeast Asia. As the time, Myanmar’s reopening and ensuing political liberalisation, economic reforms, and development progress after nearly five decades of military dictatorship — and their associated site-specific problems and challenges — captivated her attention.