Journalist and former Russia correspondent Peter d’Hamecourt died on Sunday at the age of 77. His family informed the ANP news agency. D’Hamecourt, who grew up in Vlaardingen as the son of a Catholic window dresser and an atheist craft teacher, died of cardiac arrest in France, where he lived.
D’Hamecourt knew, writes RTV Rijnmond, from an early age that he wanted to become a journalist. He started his career at the late 1960s New Vlaardingsche Courant and then worked as a pop journalist for the Haagsche Courant. Then he switched to it A.Dwhere he worked as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East and South America.
The former journalist was best known as a correspondent in Moscow, for the NOS and the A.D. D’Hamecourt lived in the Russian capital between 1989 and 2008 and covered, among other things, the fall of the Soviet Union. He made more than three thousand reports for the NOS. He also occasionally worked for the Flemish broadcaster VRT, EenVandaag and the now defunct current affairs program Nova.
In 2008, D’Hamecourt stopped working as a correspondent. However, he subsequently wrote a number of books, including about the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the current President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Napoleon’s battles in Russia. He also wrote the personal book together with a good friend Trix Broekman A life turned upside down about a cerebral infarction that affected him in 2018.