Peter Makowski

Some people called him ‘The Pole’, others just ‘Polish’, but to us he was Pete – or sometimes ‘Fuckin’ Pete’, usually because his copy was late and we’d be cursing him (“Just waiting on five thousand words from Fuckin’ Pete”).

Peter John Mark Makowski was born in London to Polish parents who moved to Britain after the war, fleeing not Nazis but Communists. Pete’s grandfather, Artur Jerzy Gorski, had been the editor of Polish magazine [New Era] in 1930s Poland. He became one of an estimated 22,000 members of the Polish intelligentsia and military executed in 1940 by the Soviet secret police, in what became known as the Katyn Massacre. Pete’s dad, Jerzy Makowski, also did time in Stalin’s