Christopher Roper, a former Reuters correspondent who later founded Logotron, the UK's leading supplier of primary school software, has died aged 86. His belief that work should be an adventure was central to his character.
Witness to History
While working for Reuters, Roper was assigned to Bolivia, where Che Guevara launched his final insurgency. In October 1967, Roper was one of two journalists to see Guevara's body brought into Vallegrande strapped to a helicopter's landing gear. The scoop earned him front-page bylines in the New York Times and Izvestia.
Early Life
Roper was born at Forde Abbey in Dorset, one of four children of Diana (née King) and Geoffrey Roper, a forester and landowner. The 1930s agricultural depression had affected the family, and during the war his mother housed evacuees and elderly relatives in the unheated former abbey. He boarded at Bradfield College in Berkshire, which he disliked, and studied theology at Magdalene College, Cambridge, after a period of voluntary work in Alaska.
After graduating in 1962 and teaching in Sierra Leone, Roper joined Reuters at 24. He covered military coups in Algeria (1965), Argentina (1966) and Peru (1968).
Personal and Career Transitions
His marriage to Penelope Plowden ended in divorce in 1975, after which he lived with his future second wife, Janie Prince, and her two small children, Lucy and Mischa, in a Stockwell commune focused on political and environmental issues. Roper co-published weekly Latin American newsletters. The commune housed Argentinian refugees fleeing imprisonment after the overthrow of Isabel Perón.
By 1980 the newsletter service employed 30 people, but Roper was burnt out. Learning about the Logo programming language for children, he launched Logotron, which became the UK's leading supplier of primary school software. He believed children should be in charge of computers, not vice versa.
Later Business and Legacy
After selling Logotron to Longman in 1996, Roper returned to west Dorset, first to Lyme Regis, and co-founded the Landmark Information Group, which digitised Ordnance Survey mapping to help planners assess land contamination or environmental risks. He retired in 2002 and settled in Wootton Fitzpaine.
Roper was keenly interested in many subjects, including Dorset history and gardening, and was known for his idealism, resilience, and curiosity. He married Janie in 2003. She survives him, along with their son Will, and stepchildren Lucy and Mischa.
