With his intellect and charm, former BBC correspondent Keith Beavan turned a United Nations gig into a Cold War career as head of the public information office and a political adviser in conflict zones.

After working as BBC Radio’s West Indies reporter and then in Manhattan for Reuters news service, Beavan joined the U.N. in 1959 as a junior press officer writing news releases. He soon witnessed and worked on matters of planetary importance, such as the Cuban missile crisis and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's impassioned protest speech in the General Assembly, his family said.

Championed behind the scenes by a British diplomat, Beavan had the brains and conversational skills that made him a natural for foreign missions, often composed of endless rounds of meetings and meals, his childr

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