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I wanted to thank so many of you for your kind comments following Brian Barron's death a week ago - and to share this from Brian's daughter Fleur.
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By Fleur Barron

"My dad's stories were excellent bed-time fodder for a five-year-old with an over-active imagination. Growing up, my favourites were his entertaining stories about his time in Kenya, which always had a comic flair and hint of the absurd.

I remember one account that never failed to send me into gales of laughter - the story of the farting elephant. Dad would recount his interview with a famous Italian sculptor, who was making a plaster-cast of an anesthetised elephant. Miming the action with exaggerated gestures, dad demonstrated how the sculptor had lifted the elephant's tail to pat the plaster down over its rear, when it emitted a loud raspberry that propelled the unfortunate man several meters through the air. For me, the best parts of the story were always dad's raucous sound effects and giant leap backwards at the climax.

As I got older, I continued to live vicariously through my dad's accounts of his adventures and exploits on the job - I often asked if I could accompany him, offering my services (free of charge, naturally) as the boom-holder for the mic. Occasionally, if the assignment wasn't too dangerous and my mum was able to accompany us, I was invited to come along. Once it was to North Korea as he investigated reports of famine in a totalitarian state closed to the outside world.

Watching him in action, I think I always saw him as a modern 007 - he had the cool, the composure, the authority, and the taste for dapper suits. Armani, of course. But beyond this, I was also struck by his gritty determination and professionalism - he never reneged on a commitment, and he was incredibly resourceful in finding a way to make his angle work, no matter what.

In high school and university, when I had my own research assignments on some of the grislier events and topics he had covered in his career, like the Vietnam War or the genocide in Rwanda, I used to push him to reveal details of what he had seen and experienced in these places. He rarely indulged me, saying he didn't want to discuss things he had so effectively compartmentalised years ago. For a while, I never understood why he chose to continuously put himself in situations that would strain the emotional and mental limits of most people. But gradually, I realised that his passion for this kind of work lay in his gift of clarity and awareness in crisis situations, and above all, his desire to discover and reveal the underlying truth of a matter to a mass audience.

At the end of the day, what I admire most about my dad was his essential optimism and joie de vivre. People who knew him well would be surprised if a long day's work was finished without a vintage wine and a good meal. At home in New York, there was nothing better he liked to do than to stroll through Central Park - en famille - to the local movie theatre or take a brisk walk down Broadway to catch the latest opera instalment at the Met. Dad certainly knew what it meant to enjoy life and although his own has been cut short, he has lived more fully and wholeheartedly than anyone I know."