He was a Pulitzer Prize traveling fellow (1951) and received an Edgar Allan Poe Special Award in 1967 for A Kind of Treason, among the best first mystery thriller novels of the preceding year.
Elegant briefed Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger repeatedly on Asia in general, as well as China and Vietnam in particular.
He was proud of a handwritten note from the former president whose undeniably momentous masterstroke in foreign affairs was reopening contact with mainland China.
Richard Nixon" A patron of the Manchu Shih Tzu Society of Great Britain, he raised Shih-tzu (Chinese lion) dogs and was a devoted amateur sailor and owner of small craft for 50 years.
He spoke, read, and wrote Chinese and Japanese, having studied both the classical and modern languages, as well as German, Italian, and some Indonesian.