Ivor Porter, whom I had the great honour to meet at seminars organised by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London in the 1990s, has died on 29 May 2012. He has been a top notch expert on Romania, a British hero of the Second World War and a close friend of HM King Michael of Romania, essential in the successful execution of the 23 August 1944 royal coup that insured the freeing of Romania from the grip of Nazi Germany.
The extraordinary Ivor Forsyth Porter, CMG OBE (Mily), Cross of the Royal House of Romania, Commander of the Order of Cultural Merit (Romania), died on 29th May 2012, at the age of ninety nine years. He was a hero of the WWII and a close friend of King Michael of Romania, instrumental in the successful execution of the 23 August 1944 royal coup through which the Romanian sovereign arrested the military fascist leader Ion Antonescu and his country joined the Allied cause against Germany, shortening the war by at least six months. He published two books “Operation Autonomous: With SOE in Wartime Romania” (Chatto & Windus, 1989) and ‘Michael of Romania. The King and the Country” (Sutton, 2005). I am honored to be connected with the later book, which contains a genealogy of the Romanian Royal Family that I compiled for the publishers.
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Valentin Mandache, architectural historian 