My friend Neville Linton, who has died aged 92, was an elegant and intelligent man, a connoisseur of rum, jazz and cricket and an avid participant in Trinidad carnival. He was also an expert in international relations who had a distinguished and varied career in that field, including more than a decade of service in the senior ranks of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London.
In the 1960s and 70s he lectured in political science at the University of Alberta in Canada. In 1965 he was invited by the Commonwealth secretary general, Arnold Smith (a Canadian), to help set up the first Commonwealth heads of government meeting. In 1968 he migrated to Trinidad, where he worked first for the nascent Institute of International Relations as a senior lecturer and then as a researcher for the Caribbean Council of Churches from 1978 to 1982.
