SPYROS KYPRIANO: Spyros Kyprianou, who died on March 12th aged 69, was the President of Cyprus for 11 years and the man who chose, twice, to pass over the opportunity of reunifying the island when its estranged Greek and Turkish communities came closest to making peace.
A true conservative, the British-trained barrister preferred not to dance to the tune of risk. Going down in history as a rejectionist would, he believed, be better than engineering a "bad solution".
As the overseer of the island's economic revival in the wake of the 1974 Turkish invasion, he was vehemently opposed to making concessions that might undermine the Greek-controlled south's new-found wealth. In 1978, and again in 1985 when he had flown to New York to sign a UN-brokered accord, he walked away from a settlement.
Spyros Kyprianou, who was born on October 28th, 1932, in Limassol, belonged to the generation who first openly opposed British rule - echoed on the ground by the guerrillas of EOKA. As the right-hand man of Archbishop Makarios - who was to become the island republic's first leader in 1960 - he had advocated enosis, union with Greece, back in the 1950s.
Such views got him expelled from Britain, where he remained as Makarios's unofficial representative of the Greek Cypriot independence movement after receiving a London University law degree in 1952.
At the age of 28, Makarios made him the world's youngest foreign minister. He made his début on the global stage in 1964, with a spirited defence of the Greek Cypriot position at the UN General Assembly. With inter-communal strife at its worst, the majority Greek population was being denounced for the killings of its Turkish compatriots.
Spyros Kyprianou's loathing of Cyprus's breakaway Turkish state - unilaterally declared in 1983, nine years after the invasion - and hardline stance towards forming a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation, infuriated politicians at home and abroad.
But despite his deadpan demeanour, the diminutive politician did not lack the ability to surprise. Among the English-speaking elite on both sides of the divided capital, Nicosia, he was known affectionately as "Kippers".
From the day he slipped into the presidency in 1977 - to finish the presidential term of his dead hero, Makarios - Spyros Kyprianou voiced the unexpected. At times his statements bordered on the bizarre. In 1978 - two years after founding his centre-right Diko Party and only months after being elected for the first of the two five-year terms he was to serve as president - he announced to an incredulous electorate that there had been an internationally inspired plot to topple him. Only his nifty handling had thwarted the "big conspiracy". A West German diplomat was declared persona non grata, an Israeli football coach was deported and an unknown Cypriot was summarily imprisoned. Years later, with no evidence ever having been brought to light, relations with Bonn remained strained.
In the early 1980s, he announced that a criminal gang planned to release toxic gas in Nicosia - again with little to go by. But Spyros Kyprianou, oblivious to embarrassment, stuck by the stories, displaying the tenacity that underpinned his staying power.
In 1983, after allying with the communist party, Akel, and the socialist Edek - supporters of his tough stance towards the Turks - he was re-elected president with 57 per cent of the vote.
When he was eventually removed from office by a more flexible business tycoon, George Vasilliou, in 1988, heart problems had already begun to take a toll. Five years in the political wilderness were to follow, with his party, Diko, diminishing in strength. But where most might have given up the ghost, Spyros Kyprianou bounced back.
In the 1993 presidential elections, he shrewdly decided to throw his party's weight behind the conservative politician Glafkos Clerides and was generously rewarded when his old rival went on to clinch the elections. Diko won five key government posts. In 1996, clearly revived, Spyros Kyprianou was elected president of the house of representatives for a second time, leaving the post when parliament was dissolved on the eve of general elections last year.
Weeks before his death, he told an audience, gathered in his honour, that he had always hoped his life would come close in spirit to the marvellous journey of self-discovery evoked in Ithaca, the signature work of the great, modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy.
"Has," he asked rhetorically, "my life been 'full of adventure, full of discovery?' I think it has. Would I do it, exactly the same, all over again? Yes I would."
He married Mimi Pagathrokliton in 1956. They had two sons.
Spyros Kyprianou: born 1932; died, March 2002