Steve Eulogy My earliest recollections of Steve date back to our childhood in Surrey. We were lucky enough to live within easy reach of acres and acres of common land – both heath and woodland – and spent many hours playing there as children. This probably sparked Steve’s early interest in natural history and left him with an abiding love of unspoilt nature. He certainly came to love the wild, mountainous areas of Northwest China and told me that, during one of his solo expeditions in the high country, he actually spent a night sleeping on a glacier. Steve also loved to eat well and I remember him, during the early 80s, coming home from a day spent working on the building site and devouring a huge meal. He then sat down on the sofa in front of the TV with a stomach that was visibly bulging. However, due to his high metabolism, it didn’t take him long to digest a meal and, during his late-teens and early twenties, he would regularly win eating competitions, easily beating anyone foolish enough to challenge him to this type of contest. I’m sure that the fact that China is a country with a food-based culture was part of its appeal for Steve. His Chinese friend and business partner, Julie Zhang, told me that Steve’s ability to eat large quantities of food and still remain slim was in fact characteristic of someone born, as he was, in the Chinese Year of the Snake. An abundance of fuel was certainly a requirement for the very active life Steve led. Athletics – particularly distance running – was a lifelong passion and gave him an outlet through which to channel his natural energy. He was a keen cross-country runner during his youth and continued running up till the day he died. Although he was never an elite sportsman he certainly had some talent in his chosen field, and once beat the district champion of Lanzhou (the Chinese city in which he lived and worked) in a 3,000 metre race. He was also an extremely hard worker and, although he initially only started working in the building trade to pay his way through college, soon gained a reputation as one of the best hod carriers in the Surrey area. It was partly money gained through building work that enabled Steve to set up his own trading company – Action Northwest Limited – and he brought the same energy and determination to bear in the field of business as he had in all other areas of his life. In addition to being physically fit and athletic Steve was also a highly intelligent and cultured person with a deep appreciation for literature. Although he was academically gifted in a number of areas he had a special aptitude for languages and could quote lines from Chaucer and Shakespeare – which he studied at O and A level – in context during a conversation. His love of literature also tied in with his sense of natural justice and he was very fond of 19th century writers, such as Dickens and Zola, whose work addressed the social injustices of their time. As his Chinese tutor, Mr Tang, pointed out, Steve’s sense of fair play meant that he often jeopardized his own position in China by sticking up for ordinary people when he saw them being bullied by the authorities. Having known him for 45 years I’ll always remember Steve as an honest, loyal, hardworking and decent person who lived his life to the full. He will be sadly missed by me and many others who knew him.