Desmond FitzGerald

Desmond FitzGerald, the 29th and last Knight of Glin who died on September 14 aged 74, was a connoisseur of the decorative arts who worked for the Victoria and Albert Museum and the fine art auctioneers Christie’s and, as a campaigning president of the Irish Georgian Society, helped to save many architectural treasures over the Irish Sea from dereliction or insensitive development.

The greater part of his energies, however, he devoted to restoring and preserving his family’s ancestral seat of Glin Castle, on the Shannon estuary in Co Limerick.

The Knight of Glin, Desmond FitzGerald and his wife Madam Olda FitzGerald in the grounds of Glin Castle 

 

The Knight of Glin, also called the Black Knight, is one of three ancient Irish hereditary titles dating from the 13th and 14th centuries and recognised by Irish Republican governments. (FitzGerald’s kinsman, Adrian FitzGerald, the 24th Knight of Kerry, is known as the Green Knight; Maurice FitzGibbon, who died in 1611, was the 12th and last White Knight.)

The Black Knights descend from a younger or illegitimate son of John FitzGerald, 1st Baron Desmond, grandson of Maurice FitzGerald, a companion-in-arms of Strongbow, the 12th century Norman conqueror of Ireland. Glin, an estate which once encompassed more than 30,000 acres, was granted to this branch of the FitzGerald family in the early 14th century by their overlord at the time, the FitzGerald Earl of Desmond.

Unlike their ill-fated overlords, the Knights of Glin survived both the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland and the Cromwellian and Jacobite wars, even though they were invariably on the losing side. In 1567 the then Knight of Glin, Thomas FitzGerald, was hanged, drawn and quartered and had much of his estate confiscated for his role in the Desmond Rebellion against Elizabeth I. Legend has it that his mother seized his severed head and drank his blood before gathering his body parts for burial. In the Jacobite wars of the 17th century another Knight was told that if he did not surrender, then his six-year-old son (who had been kidnapped and tied to a cannon) would be blown to bits. He replied that as he was virile and his wife was strong, it would be easy to produce another son.

Other colourful ancestors include “The Cracked Knight”, who is said to have ridden his horse up the back stairs; “The Big Knight”, who took solace in the whiskey bottle; and “The Knight of the Women”, who was reputed to have fathered at least 15 illegitimate children, but was forgiven because he was a Gaelic scholar (and native speaker) revered by the local people.

But Desmond FitzGerald would refer to the “general improvidence” of his ancestors. For generations the Knights of Glin kept debt collectors at bay by setting a mob on to them, although the 21st Knight, Richard, spent time in a Dublin prison for unpaid monies. By the time the 24th Knight, Colonel John Bateman FitzGerald, inherited the castle in 1781, the debts could no longer be avoided. The original medieval castle of Glin was a ruin and the Knights had moved into a new “castle” — in reality a long thatched house overlooking the River Shannon. Expensive carriages, 5,000 acres of land and many treasured family heirlooms had to be sold to make ends meet.
The Colonel’s marriage to Margaretta Maria Gwyn, a wealthy Englishwoman, led to a temporary respite in the family’s inexorably declining fortunes. He added a large Georgian house to the castle in 1795, where she oversaw the installation of neo-classical plasterwork ceilings and a dramatic double flying staircase. But they never got around to finishing the third floor and, when the Colonel died in 1803, it was found he had no money left. An auction was held of the entire contents of the house — the only things not sold were the family portraits and the library shelving. In the 1820s “The Knight of the Women” added battlements and false arrow loops, but the third floor remained unfinished — a maze of exposed rafters and bat colonies.
Yet the family was tenacious in hanging on to what remained of its patrimony. In 1923 Desmond’s grandfather, the 27th Knight, saved the castle from being raided by a Sinn Fein mob. Confined to a wheelchair after a stroke, he refused to leave the castle, roaring: “You’ll have to burn it with me inside, boys.” On hearing this, the rebels were said to have dispersed to a village hostelry while the Knight used the petrol they had left behind to run the farm machinery.
Desmond FitzGerald inherited the castle and title aged 12, on the death of his father from tuberculosis in 1949. By this time, all that remained of the estate was 500 acres of park and grazing land. The castle was dilapidated and there was very little good furniture.
Things began to look up after his mother, Veronica, married again in 1954. Her second husband was the Canadian millionaire, Ray Milner. Together they set about restoring Glin Castle after centuries of neglect and, after moving back to Glin from London in 1975, Desmond and his wife Olda threw their own energies into the project.
They spent decades combing auction rooms in an attempt to buy back the pictures, drawings and china that had been sold in leaner times, steadily restoring the fabric of the building and “filling in the incomplete pretensions of the 18th and 19th century” as Desmond put it, including completing the top floor. A plaque in the garden bears the legend 1785-2002 — a construction span of 217 years.
They started a bed and breakfast business and in 2002 turned the castle into a small hotel which did well for a number of years, and where the 29th Knight, a youthful and handsome figure into his 70s, continued to cut a dash in his signature tweed jacket and black polo neck sweater. But the international credit crunch and the Irish economic nosedive hit them hard and finances became increasingly strained.
In 2009 hundreds of paintings and objets d’art from Glin Castle went under the hammer at Christie’s, raising two million euros: “Glin has been the ancestral property of my family for over 700 years,” FitzGerald explained. “It is my greatest hope that it will continue to remain in the family and be enjoyed and cherished long into the future.”
Desmond John Villiers FitzGerald was born on July 13 1937, the youngest of three children and an only son. His father, the 28th Knight of Glin, was a keen fisherman and driver of vintage sports cars, for which he was known locally as “the Nippy Knight”. His English mother, Veronica Villiers, was a considerable beauty and a cousin of Winston Churchill.
His parents’ marriage was tempestuous, but the children did not see them much. Desmond, along with his sisters, Rachel and Fiola, lived in four dilapidated rooms on the unfinished third floor of castle, while their parents occupied the main floor. He described his childhood as lonely.
During the Second World War (in which the Republic of Ireland was neutral), his father tried to join the Irish Guards but failed the medical. Desmond recalled an occasion when, holidaying in County Kerry, they discovered that a German was staying at the same hotel: “My mother, who was a very forthright woman, informed the manager that she would not have dinner in the company of a German, so she ordered her dinner in her bedroom. All the other people in the hotel followed her example, which caused quite a ripple. She had a plan that if they came up the river Shannon, she would ask all the officers to dinner, and when they sat down, they would be given poisoned soup.”
Desmond was sent to England from the age of eight and claimed to have gone to “more schools than you’ve had hot dinners”. But he settled down at Stowe, an “architectural paradise” which inspired him to study Architecture and Art History at university.
He first went to the University of British Columbia, where his mother lived part-time after her second marriage. He then took a Master’s degree at Harvard. In 1965 he moved to London, where he got a job at the Victoria and Albert Museum as a curator in the furniture department.
FitzGerald had collected antiques from his early teens and in London he spent much of his spare time prowling around antique shops, finding it possible to buy Irish antiques quite cheaply, as few people knew anything about Irish furniture, and Irish collectors concentrated on silver and glass.
It was around this time he met his first wife, Loulou de la Falaise, who would become famous as the muse of Yves St Laurent, but the marriage lasted less than a year. They remained friends, however, and in 1970 he married Olda Willes, a great friend of Loulou’s.
After returning to Ireland in 1975 FitzGerald was appointed Christie’s Irish representative and became involved in the Irish Georgian Society, founded in 1958 by Desmond Guinness. “While a certain animosity still exists towards these homes given that they were arguably the product of an enslaved society,” he argued, “people should remember that the craftsmen who fashioned them came from the Irish community as a whole.” He served as the society’s president from 1991.
FitzGerald wrote and lectured extensively on Irish art, architecture and decorative arts. A governor of the National Gallery of Ireland, he published a family history, The Knights Of Glin in 2009. Other books he published included Irish Furniture (2007) and The Irish Country House (2010, both co-written with James Peill). He was also elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and served on the boards of the Irish Landmark Trust and the Castletown Foundation.
Desmond and Olda FitzGerald had three daughters; the eldest, Catherine, is married to the actor Dominic West and was previously married to the Earl of Durham.
The Knight was philosophical about having no son to inherit the Glin title and estate: “I can’t really feel too sad about it. A male heir would have inherited an impossible burden”. None the less Olda, Catherine, Honor and Nesta FitzGerald intend to continue the restoration of Glin Castle to which he contributed so much.

Michael Hart

Michael Hart typed in hundreds of the texts himself, starting with the US Declaration of Independence. 

Michael Hart, who has died of a heart attack aged 64, referred to himself as the "grandfather of ebooks", but his real aim was to change the world. In 1971, he realised that electronic texts could be copied and distributed at no cost, and he founded Project Gutenberg to make out-of-copyright books freely and universally available. His mission was to "help break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy".
Since this was in the pre-internet days of the early Arpanet, there were only a couple of dozen computers on the network, but as Hart said, echoing Confucius: "Even the greatest journeys start with but a single step." At the end of Hart's journey, Project Gutenberg's aim was to distribute a billion free ebooks: 10m books in 100 languages.
The project started by accident, after a Fourth of July fireworks display. A student at the University of Illinois, Hart had been given some free time on the mainframe computer. "We were just coming up on the American bicentennial and they put faux-parchment historical documents in with the groceries," he said in 2002. "So, as I fumbled through my backpack for something to eat, I found the US Declaration of Independence and had a lightbulb moment. I thought for a while to see if I could figure out anything I could do with the computer that would be more important than typing in the Declaration of Independence, something that would still be there 100 years later, but couldn't come up with anything, and so Project Gutenberg was born."
Hart thus became the internet's first information provider, before the internet had been invented. As he said later: "Project Gutenberg was just one of those great combinations of luck and being the right person in the right place at the right time." In the beginning, he typed every word himself, originally on a Teletype terminal on to punched paper tape. After the Declaration of Independence, John F Kennedy's inaugural address, Lincoln's Gettysburg address and other civic documents, he started on the King James Bible. It finally appeared online in 1989. The first novel was Moby-Dick.
For 17 years, "it was just me tilting at windmills," said Hart. He typed in 313 books before the next breakthrough: he linked up with the University of Illinois's new PC user group. With help from a colleague, Mark Zinzow, Hart set up a mailing list to publicise his project, and started asking for volunteers to contribute. By the end of the year, the e-library had grown to about 1,600 titles. It was an early example of "crowdsourcing" and paralleled the growth of personal computing and the open-source programming movement.
As volunteers took over the rapidly growing project, Hart set up the non-profit Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation in 2000. With books increasingly being scanned rather than retyped, Distributed Proofreaders was set up, providing volunteers to check them. These scans now make up a large proportion of the project's 36,000 texts.
In an email interview with the journalist Richard Poynder in 2006, Hart stated: "The biggest problem is the time it takes to do the necessary copyright research before making an e-text. The next biggest is dealing with the constant threat of lawsuits, which come in every year."
In particular, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (1998), which extended US copyright terms by 20 years, had a devastating effect, shrinking the public domain by, in Hart's view, a million books. He told Poynder: "We spent nearly the entire 1980s working on an edition of Shakespeare that was expected to go into the public domain, but failed to do so when the copyright laws were changed."
Hart was born in Tacoma, near Seattle, in Washington state. His father was an accountant, and his mother – a former wartime codebreaker – was a business manager at a department store. Both decided to retrain as teachers. In 1958, the family moved to Urbana, Illinois, where his father taught Shakespeare studies and his mother taught mathematics at the University of Illinois. After various adventures and a stint in the army, where he served in Korea, Hart enrolled at the university's Urbana-Champaign campus in 1971. He graduated in two years. Then Project Gutenberg took over his life.
He supported himself by doing odd jobs, and was extremely frugal. He told Poynder: "It's hard for me to spend $10 on dinner; the average is well under $5. I have no cable [TV] or cell phone. I ride a bicycle most of the time. I also wear garage sale clothes; in fact I live just about totally on garage sales." An unpaid appointment as adjunct professor at Illinois Benedictine College helped him to solicit donations for his project. "I know that sounds odd to most people, but I just never bought into the money system all that much. I never spent it when I got it. It's all a matter of perspective; most people spend the vast majority of their money on things I just don't care about."
Earlier this year, on 16 July, Hart wrote to supporters such as the Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle to say he was "working to create a graceful exit" from the project "without any of the repercussions that could take place when I shuffle off this mortal coil". He was feeling his age, and planned to move to Hawaii.
Hart is survived by his mother, Alice, and his brother, Bennett.

• Michael Stern Hart, digital archivist, born 8 March 1947; died 6 September 2011

Father Jesús Silva

Father Jesús Silva, who died on September 8 aged 78, was a Spanish priest who founded a “city republic” for underprivileged children and a celebrated international boys’ circus, El Circo de Los Muchachos.

Father Jesus Silva 

Silva established La Ciudad de los Muchachos (the City of Boys) at Benposta, near Orense in Galicia, in 1956. The inhabitants were all boys from deprived backgrounds, aged from about four to 20.

The children ran the “republic” themselves, electing a mayor from among their number, while others took on various civic duties; the city had its own police force, public health officials, financial advisers and guardians of public morals. Racial and social distinctions were not recognised; attendance at Mass was not obligatory.

Concrete blocks were constructed to house dormitories, dining halls and classrooms. There was a bakery, petrol station, pottery factory, souvenir shop, supermarket, printing press and shoemaker.

The city even had its own currency, into which visitors had to change whatever money they were carrying (even Spanish pesetas) in order to make purchases.

Although the community near Orense closed in 2003, Father Silva’s example at Benposta has been taken up in many other countries — particularly in South America — where similar communities have been set up for street children. Although some now have resident adults, these have no more rights or powers than the children.

Jesús Cesar Silva Mendez was born at Orense on January 25 1933, the son of an architect. He decided to become a Jesuit priest, and a year before his ordination in 1957, he rescued 15 orphans and abandoned boys from the streets of Orense and gave them lodging at his mother’s house.
It was a gesture which did not go down well with his bishop, who cut off Silva’s stipend. Undeterred, he converted his mother’s house to include dormitories, workshops, classrooms and even a gym before his brother Jose Manuel, a lawyer, bought 30 acres of land outside the town for about £12,000. The property was called Benposta and handed over to Father Silva for his pioneering City of Boys. Later a second branch was established in a 16th-century monastery at Celanova, 20 miles away, for another 300 children.
Although Benposta received generous donations, the main burden of fund-raising fell on the shoulders of Father Silva.
His great-uncle was Manuel Feijoo, a celebrated Spanish circus impresario who combined with the Castilla family to create Madrid’s Circo Price and the touring Circo Americano; and for years Father Silva was chaplain to all the Spanish circuses, conducting Mass or baptising children under the Big Top.
He decided to put his circus heritage to good use, and in 1963 created an International Circus School at Benposta. He then founded El Circo de Los Muchachos, the boys’ own circus, to help fund the city. Originally the artistes came from Benposta, but they were later joined by young people from all parts of Spain, France, Spanish Guinea and Brazil.
The circus first hit the road in 1965, and for four years toured Spain and Portugal. In 1970 it went to France, with more than 100 artistes . The tour was sponsored by Jean Roche, director of the French Cirque Amar. Things turned sour, however, when the French impresario cancelled the contract, which became the subject of court action; the Muchachos were stranded in Amiens for two months until new engagements could be found.
Over the Christmas period in 1970-71 they were a triumph at the Grand Palais in Paris. They later enjoyed successful tours in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Canada, Japan and Australia.
The circus raised money for the city (the performers were reportedly paid £1.70 a week, with all their expenses covered by the company). Many of the boys went on to successful careers in other circuses.
Father Silva, who was awarded a UN peace medal , lived a modest life in Benposta, residing in a brick hut. His motor scooter was eventually replaced by a white Citroën estate car, his only indulgence.

Spartacus TV actor Andy Whitfield dies at 39

 

Andy Whitfield was relatively unknown before he was cast as Spartacus

 

Andy Whitfield, the British star of US TV drama Spartacus: Blood and Sand, has died at the age of 39.

Whitfield died on Sunday in Sydney, Australia, 18 months after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, his family and manager said.
His wife, Vashti, described him as "our beautiful young warrior".
Whitfield was born in North Wales and moved to Australia in 1999. Actor Liam McIntyre took over Whitfield's role in the TV series when he became ill.
"On a beautiful sunny Sydney spring morning, surrounded by his family, in the arms of his loving wife, our beautiful young warrior Andy Whitfield lost his 18-month battle with lymphoma cancer," his wife said in a statement.
'Courage and strength' "He passed peacefully surrounded by love. Thank you to all his fans whose love and support have helped carry him to this point. He will be remembered as the inspiring, courageous and gentle man, father and husband he was."
Chris Albrecht, president and chief operating officer of US TV network Starz, said he was "deeply saddened" by Whitfield's loss.
"We were fortunate to have worked with Andy in Spartacus and came to know that the man who played a champion on-screen was also a champion in his own life," Albrecht said in a statement.
"Andy was an inspiration to all of us as he faced this very personal battle with courage, strength and grace," he added.
Whitfield played the title role in all 13 episodes of the first series, screened in 2010, and was about to shoot the second series when he was diagnosed with cancer.
Spartacus, which attracted media attention in the US for its graphic scenes of sex and violence, was first seen in the UK on the now defunct Bravo channel before moving to Sky One.
In an interview with the Deadline Hollywood website last year, Whitfield said having cancer had taught him some important lessons.
"After the initial shock - I was a healthy young man and had no idea this could happen - it was frustrating that the first season was ending on such a high note."
But he added he then found "time to heal, figure things out and spend time with my family. Stay in the now and enjoy every moment."
Whitfield's Spartacus co-star Lucy Lawless also paid tribute to the actor in a statement to EW:

"Andy Whitfield left an indelible mark on all of us in the Spartacus family," she said. "He was a gentle man who never said a bad word about anyone, a gifted photographer, engineer (no really!) and a brilliant actor.
"How lucky we were to have him grace all our lives. Godspeed, Andy!"

US film actor Cliff Robertson dies aged 88

 

Cliff Robertson died one day after his 88th birthday, his secretary said

 

Oscar-winning Hollywood actor Cliff Robertson has died at the age of 88.

He played a young John F Kennedy in the biographical 1963 film PT-109 and won an Academy Award in 1968 for his performance in Charly as a mentally disabled man.
Robertson remained a popular TV and film actor from the mid-1950s onwards. He later found a new generation of fans as Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man movies.
His secretary said he had died in New York state of natural causes.
"My father was a loving father, devoted friend, dedicated professional and honourable man," his daughter Stephanie Saunders said in a statement quoted by Associated Press news agency.
"He stood by his family, friends, and colleagues through good times and bad. We will all miss him terribly."
Based on the award-winning book Flowers for Algernon, 1968's Charly saw Robertson play mentally disabled bakery worker Charlie Gordon - the subject of an experiment to increase human intelligence.
He starred in the film opposite the English actress Claire Bloom.
In 1972, Robertson made his debut as a director on J.W Coop, a film he co-wrote and starred in as an ageing rodeo cowboy.
Robertson was blacklisted by Hollywood for several years after blowing the whistle on a studio chief who was subsequently accused of embezzlement.
Columbia Pictures head David Begelman pleaded no contest to charges of grand theft and was fined and sentenced to three years' probation, though he was hired to run MGM three years later.
In 2002, Robertson was cast as Peter Parker's kindly uncle Ben in Sam Raimi's adaptation of Spider-Man. Despite being killed in the first film, he appeared in flashback in the following two movies.

David Davies

David Davies kept his party political sympathies to himself in the officers’ mess

"It's deliberate Tory policy to create high unemployment to weaken the unions." This was an unusual mantra for a retired lieutenant colonel, but David Davies, who has died aged 93, was an unusual army officer. He was born in Yorkshire to the unlikely union of a coalmining, former Welsh rugby international, Howell Davies, and the daughter of a mill owner, Mary Wood. For a sport-obsessed young man at a time of high unemployment, the army offered opportunities for cricket and rugby, as well as travel, and he joined up in 1935.
David saw second world war service as a private in the the Royal Army Medical Corps, attached to the Desert Rats. He was shocked when, in the 1990s, he recognised a former soldier who had suffered severe burns, talking of his north African experiences on a documentary. David had administered what he thought at the time was futile first aid to the same man in 1941, before the soldier was transported back to field hospital. Now, here was the casualty, 50 years later, alive and well on television.
His outlook as a lifelong member of the Labour party was crystallised by his experiences in wartime, and he recalled a Welsh private delivering a lecture on the evils of capitalism from the back of an army canteen wagon, based on Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
War demanded a more meritocratic approach to promotion, and David moved up the ranks quickly. He served on the Gold Coast of west Africa and was appointed MBE for his work in the development of the Ghanaian health system. Shortly afterwards he was commissioned.
During the 60s he kept his Labour party membership to himself, and some of the officers' mess whisperings about Harold Wilson being a closet communist caused him a good deal of anger. He served in Germany, and his final posting in the 1970s was as admin officer of the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot. A career army man he may have been, but above he was a peaceable, gentle man who rarely raised his voice in anger.
He is survived by his partner of the last 13 years, Joyce Ovens; his sons, John and Russell, from his marriage to Bernice Graham, who died in 1989; and his grandsons, Max and Jacob.

Mike Terry

Mike Terry, who died on August 29 aged 86, was a journalist of the sort that has now all but disappeared from Fleet Street; many of the tales told about him involved his glass eye – a legacy of the war – staring up from the bottom of someone else’s pint glass.

His career inside the office reached its peak in the 1960s, when he was one of the gifted young editorial figures on Hugh Cudlipp’s Daily Mirror who took tabloid newspapers into the hitherto uncharted territory of in-depth news and features. Terry did so first as the Mirror’s features editor, a pivotal post in the paper’s campaign to show its new ambition, and then as its Northern editor.

Mike Terry, as presented in The Sun after the bingo catastrophe

 

His career beyond the office – usually in the Mirror pub known as The Stab in the Back – was just as celebrated. One colleague recalled being joined by Terry at The Stab. Asked what he wanted to drink, Terry replied: “I’ll have a double brandy and a vodka and Scotch with some ginger ale, and not too much ginger ale.” Having explained that he wanted this concoction in one glass, Terry then added: “When I drink this I may go a bit of a funny colour. I’m taking these tablets to stop me drinking. Take no notice.”

During such hard-drinking sessions Terry would frequently remove his glass eye and drop it into a pint of beer. Occasionally he would forget it in the Gents. Either way, it provoked shouts of anguish from whichever unlucky soul discovered it leering up at him.

Such excesses took their toll, and Terry was fired from the Mirror in 1970. He then found a sub-editing berth on the Sun, gave up the drink, and passed on the fruits of his undoubted charm, talent and experience with unfailing good humour. He did, however, make one notorious cock-up.

This occurred due to an uncharacteristic failure to check the paper’s bingo numbers. The subsequent misprint, on May 19 1984, left 3,000 Sun readers under the impression that they had scooped the top prize of £40,000. One hired a Rolls-Royce to arrive at the paper’s office and claim his “prize”. It was typical of Terry’s good grace that, to assuage readers’ ire, he agreed to appear in an apology wearing a dunce’s cap, under the headline “I’m the Bingo bungler”.

Michael Dungate Terry was born on February 15 1925 in Findon Valley, at the foot of the South Downs. His father, Thomas, a barrel-chested Sussex yeoman who had served in the trenches through most of the First World War, was a stained-glass craftsman. His mother, Ella, had been a nurse. Michael, an only child, attended Worthing Grammar School, but left when his father’s business went bankrupt to start his career in journalism on the Worthing Herald.
Aged 18 he joined the Wiltshire Regiment, where he served as a lieutenant. After D-Day he was involved in fierce fighting around the village of Tilly-Sur-Seulles. After one patrol was cut down by a booby trap, Terry led a platoon to see if there were any survivors, only to trigger a landmine; he lost his right eye in the blast and sustained shrapnel injuries so severe that doctors thought he would not walk again. Despite his wounds he managed to drag one injured soldier back behind the lines, but the rest of his platoon was killed in the explosion.
After the war he remained briefly in the Army before rejoining the Worthing Herald. He then moved to London, working at The South London Chronicle, the Evening News and the News Chronicle. Once, when short of copy for the Evening News’s gossip column, Terry bought a box of live crustaceans from Billingsgate and released them in Mayfair. The story ran with the headline: “Crabs In Curzon Street”.
There was more to him than drinking, crabs and bungled bingo: Terry had a love of poetry and recited beautifully in his rounded baritone. It was a voice he also deployed to great effect while bashing out songs by Jimmy Witherspoon and Big Bill Broonzy at the bars of packed pubs.
He never lost his love of jazz, nor of lone country hikes. One such ramble almost ended in disaster when he fell while descending Great Gable, in the Lake District, after nightfall. Coming to in the dark, bleeding from a cut head and not knowing if he had landed on a precipice, he decided that the safest course of action was to stay awake until daybreak. To keep himself going he set about reciting every piece of Shakespeare he knew. Several hours later he still had not reached the end of his repertoire when dawn enabled him to complete the descent in safety.
He retired to Hook Norton in Oxfordshire in 1988 after helping see The Sun through its troubled move to Wapping.

Mike Terry married Sheila Latham in 1952. She died in 2004, and he is survived by their daughter and by two sons, both of whom work in journalism.