I had the opportunity to share with David many Liberal International meetings over the years. 
He was, one of the more active Liberal Brit at LI events, sharing spokemanship with Robert Browne, Sharon Bowles and with a few other colleagues.
We, less politically sophisticated Mediterraneans, had always a lot to learn from David: his acute observations, his sharp and often humorous comments and replicas, his passionate way of defending liberal principles. I have to say that in the endless debates and friendly quarrels with more right wing liberals at LI, we the Catalans, very often took his more progressive side. When not, David’s face always showed a slight but ironical disappointment.
David was my predecessor as LI Treasurer. He was “kind enough” to pass me his complete and huge archive of documents on files and cases. I still can see his relief for getting rid of LI finances and especially of that amount of papers. As a matter of fact, he was tremendously kind in helping me in the first weeks of my “mandate”. Unfortunately, I would not be able to excuse myself for that Saturday afternoon when my repeated questions on “high LI finances” made David be late for his unmisseable weekly soccer match.
We will miss David being around, as we will miss all those liberals like him, scarce these days, whose liberalism is based on deep principles, on timeless values.