Francis Greene (UK)

Francis Greene (1937-2022), physicist and journalist, had travelled extensively earlier in his life and reported from many conflict zones. In 1990, he met Irina Osipova of the recently set up Memorial Society in Moscow and offered any assistance he could give. This resulted in twice-yearly visits, the last in February 2020. He wrote accounts of his Soviet Union/Russian travels and these, 57 in all, are now kept in the Russian Archive at Leeds University, England. During these years he was also involved with the Russian Booker literary prize and set up, under its auspices, the ‘Little Booker’, which was awarded to a different category each year: provincial literary magazines, memoirs, short stories, etc. Francis was also remarkably generous in his support of many other individuals and groups working in the field of ecology, human rights and research into some of the darker chapters of Soviet history. He died in 2022 at the age of 85, after a diagnosis of terminal cancer.