STANDING in a shop yards from the British Consulate in Istanbul, Victoria Short heard the huge explosion which ended her husband’s life at 11am yesterday.

A couple of hours earlier, she had left her husband, Roger, as he walked towards the consulate in Beyoglu, once the heart of Ottoman Istanbul.

The 59-year-old Consul-General, about to enter his final year in the Foreign Office before retirement, went to the makeshift office near the consulate’s gate that he had occupied since a fire damaged the original building.

He used to joke with staff that he preferred being closer to the streets. Yesterday he discussed Saturday’s rugby World Cup final before settling down to some paperwork with his personal assistant, Lisa Hallworth. When a lorry loaded with explosives crashed into the gate neither stood a chance.

The office took the full force and Mr Short, the father of two adult daughters and a son of 15, died instantly. Ms Hallworth was also killed.

The newly refurbished consulate escaped and as the smoke cleared, the Union Jack was still flying. Ian Sherwood, the Anglican chaplain to the consulate, and a close friend of Mr Short, said: “He was blown up immediately.”

The chaplain had rushed from his home to comfort Mrs Short, a nurse. He said: “I have known Roger for almost three years and he was a marvellous character who would pull out the stops to help people visiting here.”

Mr Sherwood added: “The family are extremely broken, of course. Victoria was very close to where the bomb went off. She was very close outside the consulate. Had she walked a little further she’d be dead. She’d gone to a little shop.”

Only on Monday, during a lunch with journalists, Mr Short, a music-loving classicist, had talked about last Saturday’s bomb attack on two synagogues in Istanbul. He had suggested that the attacks would be of wider concern only if they were the start of a concerted bombing campaign.

For Mr Short, Istanbul was the perfect final posting after more than 30 years as a career diplomat. Since the couple arrived in the city in 2001, the gardens of the consulate have become a passion for Victoria.

The couple’s elder daughter Katherine, 25, is teaching in Istanbul and staying with her parents, but their other two children are in England. Elizabeth, 21, is at Newcastle University and Thomas is a boarder at The King’s School, Canterbury.

A fluent Turkish and Greek speaker, Mr Short had joined the Foreign Office in 1967 after leaving University College, Oxford.

Within two years, he was given his first overseas posting at the British Embassy in Ankara, the Turkish capital. It was the start of a lifelong affection for Turkey and he returned to Ankara in 1981 for three years as Head of Chancery.

Mr Short, whose family home is in West London, also served in Rio de Janeiro, Oslo, Bosnia and Herzogovina and was Ambassador to Bulgaria in 1994-98.

Back in Istanbul, he gained a reputation for giving some of the best diplomatic parties.

A committed Anglican, he was attended church every Sunday and became close to Mr Sherwood, who said: “I’ve been a chaplain to diplomats for 20 years and he would pull all the stops out to help people whoever they were, and he has a reputation for that.

“Only two nights ago he was entertaining — we had the Archbishop of Canterbury here — and he and his wife, Victoria, gave a huge reception. “He was a very jolly man, he liked watching football matches. He was very much a partygoer, loved to be out, and when he entertained he was very happy for his guests to stay till two and three in the morning.”

Mr Short is only the second British diplomat to die in a bomb explosion. In 1976 Christopher Ewart-Biggs, the British Ambassador in Dublin, was killed when an IRA landmine blew up his car as he was being driven to the embassy.

In 1986, the UK honorary consul was shot dead as he drove through Barranquilla, northern Colombia.

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