Stieg Larsson was unique

Stieg managed to pack a vast amount of experience into his all-too-short fifty years, beginning with his poor upbringing in the forests of northern Sweden. His horizons were unlimited and, after enthusiastically doing military service, he travelled widely in Africa, witnessing bloody civil war in Eritrea at first hand.

On his return to Sweden, he took up his profession of journalism, working as a news journalist, feature writer and brilliant graphics artist for the Swedish news agency TT. To his work, he brought a razor sharp mind, and covered every major world news story – as it broke and unfolded -for almost two decades. His artistic abilities extended into the realm of painting and layout.

At the same time as working for TT, he put his talents at the disposal of the anti-fascist movement, again as a writer and illustrator, but, most notably, as a researcher whose knowledge of the Swedish and international far-right was encyclopaedic.

This expertise he constantly made available to the international anti-fascist network and his journalistic output for the network of anti-fascist publications, especially Searchlight for which he has written since the early 1980s, was huge, always guided by an acute news sense and a talent for separating disinformation from fact to get to the bottom of a situation.

Stieg Larsson was unique. His contribution to the anti-fascist movement, the left and the cause of a better, more humanistic and more egalitarian society was inestimable. He never abandoned the boundless optimism, hopes and ideas that first led him to engage in political activity.

He was the incarnation of internationalism, with a record that was unmatched, whether it was his work in solidarity with Vietnam, his support for Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, whose socialist government was so cruelly destroyed by infighting, murder and US invasion, or his later life's work of energetically combating racism, antisemitism, fascism and discrimination of all kinds, especially against women.

The seriousness of the issues he dealt with never caused him to lose his ability to smile or to bury the formidable humour and warmth which fired his endless collection of hilarious stories and anecdotes. It is hard to imagine that he will never sit with us and share them again.

A shy person, Stieg never lost his modesty nor his capacity to recognise good in others. The time he always had for other people – often accompanied by the invitation "let's meet over a cup of coffee and talk about this" – made him a much loved person.

Stieg made big financial and health sacrifices for the anti-fascist cause, to which he gave everything and asked for almost nothing in return. His greatest rewards, he saw as his summer trips to the north of Sweden, the beautiful days when he went sailing or rested at the rented summer house in the Stockholm Archipelago, the hours he spent in the bookshops of London, when the chance afforded, and a late-night malt whisky after a hard day's work.

It is an alarming irony that Stieg was taken from us just as he achieved his greatest ambitions: the consolidation of Expo magazine and the development of its staff and the publication of his crime novels.

Farewell, Stieg, and Salud!

GRAEME ATKINSON, Searchlight Magazine, Great Britain