Gareth Huw Davies

Gareth Jones was a prolific and adventurous journalist who was murdered one day short of his 30th birthday by bandits in China. His brief career, in which he filed more international scoops than most of his contemporaries would deliver in a lifetime, followed a path closer to Indiana Jones, with an additional touch of Zelig, a fictional character who had the knack of turning up in important places – until he found himself in the wrong, last place.

Outside his native Wales, the superficially unremarkable, non-conformist linguist with pebble spectacles, a perfectly buttoned up overcoat and trilby - in an age when foreign correspondents were self publicist, drink sodden bartflies - was soon forgotten. (Intriguingly, however, George Orwell may have given him an unlikely enduring celebrity by taking his name for the character Mr Jones in Animal Farm.)

Jones’s ultimate misfortune may have been to stray too deeply into the murky world of international power politics. He lost his life in 1935, when the world, sliding towards another great conflict, had no time to spare for solitary victims such as him, the small, brave people on the edge of the action.

The writer was on his last big assignment, to try to make sense of the murky political picture in the Far East, dominated by the tension between between China and Japan, with Russia pulling the strings in the background.

He had earlier walked around remote spots in the Ukraine exposing the horror of a state-sponsored famine which was killing millions. He travelled with Hitler in his private plane during his election campaign in 1933. He wrote perceptive pieces on Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the early days of his presidency. He penned agreeable essays on the declining rural traditions of his native Wales.
Outside his native Wales, the superficially unremarkable, non-conformist linguist with pebble spectacles, a perfectly buttoned up overcoat and trilby - in an age when foreign correspondents were self publicist, drink sodden bartflies - was soon forgotten. Or was he? Some believe George Orwell gave him an unlikely enduring celebrity by taking his name for the character Mr Jones in Animal Farm.

This is my account of one of his scoops, the day he flew with Hitler.