For those of you who don't know, Esmond was born in London during the blitz - bang in the middle of a bombing raid. Looking back on Esmond's life it is tempting to speculate how this traumatizing entry into a dramatic and uncertain world may have unconsciously steered Esmond into being one of life's problem solvers - a man who spent much of his working life impinging order on chaos.
His outlet as a solution provider came through his wide ranging skills in economics, engineering, mathematical modelling and computer programming. Daunting whizzy stuff for those of us less talented and able.Few tasks seemed to be beyond his capabilities. By way of example the NHS has to this day a twenty year old software programme built by Esmond which has never gone wrong - an accomplishment according to a surgeon whom Esmond met, that is virtually unprecedented in that organisation's troubled history. The surgeon testified that Esmond's programme saved many lives.
But it is in the travel industry where Esmond made his conspicuous mark - namely as a champion of “eco” or “sustainable” tourism. On behalf of bodies like the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank, Esmond travelled the globe to advise on intelligent tourism policy. Where did he go, you may ask, in his travels? More easy to answer where he didn't. No place was to small or obscure for him - Fiji, Samoa, The Maldives, The Dutch Antilles, The Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Asia. His brief varied from country to country. In Algeria for instance he advised on the national couscous factories - all 27 of them.
In 1971 his career nearly finished when he was arrested for spying in Iraq. He was observed, so the story goes, testing a new cine camera from his hotel window. The building across the street was the headquarters of the Iraqi secret police. Fortunately for Esmond the arresting officers found no film in his camera and he was released. This escapade of course sowed the seed of suspicion amongst friends and family that his work was just cover for something more intrepid. Sasha, whom he was then courting, wrote him a letter at his next posting in Afghanistan, which began “Hi Spy”. On the face of it her assumption was entirely reasonable. After all, just what tourism was there in Afghanistan was there for Esmond to advise on?
Two days ago I checked out his professional life history on Esmond's site on the internet. It really is worth a look. Greeting you is a photograph of Esmond but not the standard head and shoulders kind of corporate convention. Standing in the background is Esmond's colleague David Gorman. In the foreground Esmond sits in a rolled up shirt and baseball cap at a table with three cans and a couple of bottles. From the serene smile on Esmond's face I am confident they were empty.
The text of his website begins with personal comment. Typically of Esmond it is direct, honest and totally without pretension. I quote: “To the standard dinner party question what do I do for a living?” he says “I have always been short of a snappy answer. I have never had a career plan and bumbled happily along taking more or less the next job I was offered - particularly tempted by anything that involved different technical challenges.”
This modest introduction belies the dazzling series of accomplished projects, reports and articles which are laid out over some fifteen impressive pages. But the biggest clue to Esmond's personality lies less within the printed text but his choice of accompanying pictures. Wholly out of the corporate context of this online CV are three family photographs of Esmond with Sasha - his wife to whom he has been unswervingly devoted all his life. Picture One: the Young Married Couple in London with Esmond in a three-piece suit proudly hugging his young wife. Picture Two: the couple on a small riverboat in Senegal. Finally a picture of them taken two years ago, lying in the water together on the edge of the Victoria Falls in Zambia.
The accomplishments of Esmond's career, it may be said, were surpassed only by his exemplary success as a husband and father, a family man who has been a rock for his relatives and those fortunate enough to be his friends.
Being the character he was, Esmond was never put off by friends and relatives in adversity. Indeed it brought out his protective qualities. During his two year sojourn in the West Indies, Esmond came to know the chef in Mustique, David Dunn. Poor David was conned by a journalist posing as a holidaymaker into allowing a photograph to be taken of Princess Margaret. The picture was published, David was sacked. The demoralised David had no one to turn to. Esmond and Sasha had him to stay and looked after him until he was back on his feet.
Others like Colin Forrester, who had a long history of depression, found he could always rely on Esmond's support. Another friend is Roland Brinton, with whom he shared a flat overlooking the green in Dublin, during University days. His friendship became a family one. Roland, Veronica, Jessie, Charlie and Fred are an integral part of Esmond and Sasha's extended family circle. Esmond was devoted to his Thomas and Marnier cousins and equally to us Monsons, his sister Emma's family. For one who could appear so tough, Esmond had a strong emotional side. I will never forget the sight of him dabbing his eyes at the marriage of my brother Andrew. “I find it all so moving”, he said.
Esmond was particularly close to his brother Prosper, his wife Annie and their daughter Molly. Their relationship, like that with his other sibling Emma, did not always run smoothly. Hey, what siblings relationships ever do? Prosper tells me he still resents Esmond's booby-trapping the garden shed into which he was enticed as a young boy. Emma was not too pleased either when Esmond sabotaged some of her personal effects in her bedroom. All those close to Esmond consider the highpoints of their times with him have been shared holidays. Forever seared into the memory of Prosper, Annie and Molly are the holidays in Rousset les Vignes - especially the sight of Esmond converting his plastic luggage carrier into African drums whilst canoeing on the river Gardon.
All of us know the tragedy of Esmond's cancer - undiagnosed until it was too late. We know of his strength and courage in the face of appalling pain and the personal indignity concomitant with a wasting illness. All of us admired his fortitude.
It is said that in the final cycle of our years we revert to our infant state. In Esmond's mother Nicolette's book, Two Flamboyant Fathers, I found a reference to Esmond at the age of two. The family were fortunate to have friends in the wealthy Arthur Duckworth whose American wife kindly handed Nicolette her children's outgrown clothes. All her children, however, were girls. So Esmond at the age of two wore “Expensive feminine apparel, dainty white lawn and lace”. Wrote Nicolette, “He was a large serious boy with a very large masculine nose and in the Duckworth frillies he looked like a small bishop in his vestments”.
A few days before his death last Sunday I came to visit Esmond, Sasha and Bonamy. Esmond lay in the double bed on the top floor of their house. In spite of his pain and ailing health Esmond looked, with his parchment skin and stunning profile, quite magnificent. At first I thought of a Roman Emperor. But his wisdom and goodliness gave him a more spiritual appearance - that, I thought, of a wise philosopher. His mother's description of a bishop fitted the bill just as aptly.
On Sunday he died. As historical symmetry would have it, he left us as he came in - at the start of another bombing campaign - this time in his former client country of Afghanistan. Next morning, Sasha remarked to me that Esmond looked so happy. “he has had the first good night's sleep in ages” she said. And I think all of us can be happy for that.