Alan Emlyn Williams (28 August 1935 – 21 April 2020) was an ex-foreign correspondent, novelist and writer of thrillers. Personal life He was educated at Stowe, Grenoble and Heidelberg Universities, and at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1957 with a B.A. in modern languages. His father was the actor and writer Emlyn Williams. Noël Coward was his godfather. His younger brother Brook (1938–2005) was also an actor. Journalist Philippa Toomey described him as a "talented and funny mimic with a gift for words and a stock of tales from the shaggy Express story to the grimmer side of international journalism." He had three children. Owen (born 1977) and Laura (born 1980) with his first wife, Antonia (née Simpson). He then married literary agent Maggie Noach and their daughter Sophie was born in 1989. Together they compiled The Dictionary of Disgusting Facts. Journalism, and adventures behind the Iron Curtain Williams' British paperback publishers would claim that his first-hand experience of adventure and intrigue was put to superb use in his novels. As a student, he took part in the Hungarian uprising. He took a supply of penicillin to the insurgents in Budapest. He masqueraded his way into East Germany when that country was virtually closed. He was a delegate from Cambridge to the World Festival of Peace and Friendship in Warsaw, where he and some friends smuggled a Polish student to the West. After graduating from Cambridge, Williams worked for Radio Free Europe in Munich. He then moved on to print journalism, starting at the Western Mail. He then joined The Guardian before becoming foreign correspondent for The Daily Express, covering international wars and "other horrors". He covered stories in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, Israel and the Far East. As a reporter he covered most of the world's trouble spots – Vietnam, the Middle-East, Algeria, Czechoslovakia, Ulster, Mozambique, Cyprus and Rhodesia. He covered two Israeli–Arab conflicts, including the Six-Day War. In Algeria, the Foreign Office received complaints about him from both the French Army and the Arabs. Subsequently, he had to be smuggled out of the country after the word barbouze (spy) had been written on his car, In Beirut, he encountered Kim Philby the day before the latter disappeared to Moscow. His Vietnam reporting won him much praise. Jon Bradshaw called him "perhaps the best observer of war in England. His articles on Vietnam