Nobel peace laureate, UN secretary-general for a decade during some of its most testing times, peace envoy almost until his dying day, Kofi Annan’s record as a global statesman inevitably dominated tributes on news of his death.

But friends and colleagues have little doubt it was the 80-year-old Ghanaian’s character and mettle — his old-world charisma, unrufflability and monastic mien — that made him an exceptional figure — particularly now in an age of populism and bullhorn rhetoric.

In his first term as secretary-general, from 1997-2002, his patience earned him the sobriquet the “secular pope”, although he insisted in private that his self-control was learned, not innate. “Sometimes I walk into a situation and know someone’s going to provoke me and I just simply refuse to be provoked,” he said in an interview after his second term.