In between his Commonwealth posts he had contributed greatly to international education as a servant of the World Bank, monitoring and evaluating its many scattered educational and development projects in different parts of the Third World – projects to which he and it attached great importance. From the vantage point of Vancouver, Maraj’s previous position was to be of great importance also: it added authority to a new institution that had more ideas than resources. All his contacts – and he was proud of them – were invaluable, not least because they were not confined to people in the limited world of distance education.Throughout his life a good university man – he had taken his doctorate in Birmingham (Joseph Chamberlain would have admired him) – he was interested in “dual-mode universities” (providing education on site as well as distance learning) as they have come to be called. Communication technology was instrumental for him: the objects of all education were to bring out the best in everyone who had access to it, and widening the access was of crucial importance in the interests of people, countries and the world.He found time (with difficulty) for other things and other people, including his family, and he was a Commonwealth man in one final way which was not merely symbolic, through cricket. He had played for Trinidad, and before he travelled round the Commonwealth for educational purposes he had travelled round it unofficially in the company of some of the century’s greatest cricketers, men like Garfield Sobers.It was fitting that I learned the sad news of his death from Queensland, where so many great cricket matches had been played, from his son, also called James. He was buried in Brisbane, after a family service, leaving behind him his beloved wife and their four children.Asa BriggsJames Ajodhya Maraj, educationist, diplomat and international civil servant: born 28 September 1930; Senior Lecturer, University of West Indies 1965- 70, Head, Institute of Education 1968-70; Director, Education Division, Commonwealth Secretariat 1970-72, Commonwealth Assistant Secretary General 1973-75; Vice-Chancellor, University of South Pacific 1975-82; Senior Evaluation Officer, World Bank 1982-84; High Commissioner for Fiji in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore 1985-86; Permanent Secretary, Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Civil Aviation, Fiji 1986-88; High Commissioner to India 1986-87; President and Chief Executive Office, Commonwealth of Learning 1988-95; Special Adviser, University of South Africa 1997-99; married 1951 Etress Ouditt (two sons, two daughters); died Brisbane, Queensland 3 April 1999.. GEORGE BUTLER was the oldest living member of the Royal Watercolour Society.

Despite still exhibiting – and selling – his work until recently, Butler’s artistic roots seemed to be founded in another age entirely. Three years ago, in 1996, the RWS asked its members for their opinions on the suitability of certain papers for watercolour drawing. In his response, Butler replied that, at school, his art master had told him he had a sketchbook picked off the body of a soldier at the battle of Sebastopol: “The paper was Whatman and he said it was perfect.”
Butler was born in Sheffield in 1904, and attended King Edward VII School in Sheffield and subsequently Sheffield College of Art. From there, he went on to the Central School of Art in London Among his teachers was A.S. Hartrick, a Scottish artist, whose lessons included reminiscences of Gauguin, “a fine figure of a man” whom he had known at Pont-Aven, of Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh, with whom he had worked in the same studio in Paris.

Van Gogh, Hartrick recalled as “a rather weedy little man, with pinched features, red hair and beard, and a light blue eye”. Also around Hartrick were young artists such as Thomas Hennell, Vincent Lines and Henry Rushbury, whom Butler came to know well.In 1925 Butler went to work in the art department of the advertising agency J Walter Thompson. He stayed with the firm until 1960, from 1933 serving as director and head of the art department while at the same time continuing to paint and exhibit watercolours.Butler’s first one-man show was at the Redfern Gallery in 1927; he was later to have them in Paris, Aix-en-Provence and at Chatsworth. He also exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, the London Group, the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of British Artists and in galleries in England and France.