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| Ian Wright, who has died aged 82, was one of a small band of journalists and managers who steered the Guardian through three decades of extraordinary change between 1970 and the end of the 20th century. “Steered” is the right word, because running a paper then was like keeping a sailing ship headed hard into the wind while simultaneously trying to convert the vessel to steam. Challenging though the problems of the internet age are today, those of this interim period, when the old technology of typewriters, telex, linotype machines and hot metal presses was being replaced piecemeal by the first generations of newspaper computers, were equally difficult in their way. | Ian Wright, who has died aged 82, was one of a small band of journalists and managers who steered the Guardian through three decades of extraordinary change between 1970 and the end of the 20th century. “Steered” is the right word, because running a paper then was like keeping a sailing ship headed hard into the wind while simultaneously trying to convert the vessel to steam. Challenging though the problems of the internet age are today, those of this interim period, when the old technology of typewriters, telex, linotype machines and hot metal presses was being replaced piecemeal by the first generations of newspaper computers, were equally difficult in their way. |
| It was by no means a given that the Guardian would survive, let alone prosper. Peter Preston, the editor during most of this period, and Ian, his managing editor, were the indispensable pair at the heart of the enterprise. Although Preston had other gifted deputies, notably David McKie, none was as continuous or durable as Ian. The two were the odd couple at the centre of the Guardian, but odd only in that their virtues were complementary. Preston was not lacking in business sense, but his preoccupation was with the journalism. Ian had good journalistic instincts but his preoccupation was with the solution to the technical, commercial and human problems that came crowding in on the paper. | It was by no means a given that the Guardian would survive, let alone prosper. Peter Preston, the editor during most of this period, and Ian, his managing editor, were the indispensable pair at the heart of the enterprise. Although Preston had other gifted deputies, notably David McKie, none was as continuous or durable as Ian. The two were the odd couple at the centre of the Guardian, but odd only in that their virtues were complementary. Preston was not lacking in business sense, but his preoccupation was with the journalism. Ian had good journalistic instincts but his preoccupation was with the solution to the technical, commercial and human problems that came crowding in on the paper. |
| As foreign editor, deputy editor, and managing editor, Ian was a man suited to the needs of the times. He was shrewd, flexible, ingenious, always ready to embrace technical developments, or exploit commercial opportunities, frugal most of the time but ready to invest generously when necessary. And, although he spent much of his career exercising managerial functions, he remained passionate about the journalism which was the reason and the justification for the hours poring over budgets or assessing the differences between rival computer systems. | As foreign editor, deputy editor, and managing editor, Ian was a man suited to the needs of the times. He was shrewd, flexible, ingenious, always ready to embrace technical developments, or exploit commercial opportunities, frugal most of the time but ready to invest generously when necessary. And, although he spent much of his career exercising managerial functions, he remained passionate about the journalism which was the reason and the justification for the hours poring over budgets or assessing the differences between rival computer systems. |
| Ian’s achievements were fourfold. First, he reorganised and professionalised the Guardian’s foreign coverage. Second, although others had very important roles, he oversaw the transition to new technologies — not a single process, but a series of demanding readjustments over the years that has still not ended. Third, at Preston’s side, he helped give the paper stability, continuity and confidence. Finally, although he could be steely where the paper’s interests were concerned and very tough indeed if correspondents put in unjustifiable expenses, behind an apparently chilly exterior lay a very warm heart. Many Guardian employees who had personal or professional troubles can testify to that. | Ian’s achievements were fourfold. First, he reorganised and professionalised the Guardian’s foreign coverage. Second, although others had very important roles, he oversaw the transition to new technologies — not a single process, but a series of demanding readjustments over the years that has still not ended. Third, at Preston’s side, he helped give the paper stability, continuity and confidence. Finally, although he could be steely where the paper’s interests were concerned and very tough indeed if correspondents put in unjustifiable expenses, behind an apparently chilly exterior lay a very warm heart. Many Guardian employees who had personal or professional troubles can testify to that. |
| Ian was born in Paisley. He was the eldest son of a Methodist minister, Ernest Wright, and his wife, Nancy (nee Wheeler). His upbringing was naturally a religious one, but with the Methodist stress on social service rather than dogma, and also peripatetic, as his father moved from ministry to ministry around Britain. He was educated at Kingswood school near Bath, a public school founded by John Wesley. He went on to Christ Church, Oxford (1955-58) where he read philosophy, politics and economics. Somewhere between the two institutions he acquired his lofty, patrician style, reinforced by rather delicate blond good looks. It was a manner he used to advantage ever afterward. His irreverent younger sisters, it is said, nicknamed him LGA, for “Lord God Almighty”, while some of his American colleagues in Vietnam were later to call him “Super-Brit”. | Ian was born in Paisley. He was the eldest son of a Methodist minister, Ernest Wright, and his wife, Nancy (nee Wheeler). His upbringing was naturally a religious one, but with the Methodist stress on social service rather than dogma, and also peripatetic, as his father moved from ministry to ministry around Britain. He was educated at Kingswood school near Bath, a public school founded by John Wesley. He went on to Christ Church, Oxford (1955-58) where he read philosophy, politics and economics. Somewhere between the two institutions he acquired his lofty, patrician style, reinforced by rather delicate blond good looks. It was a manner he used to advantage ever afterward. His irreverent younger sisters, it is said, nicknamed him LGA, for “Lord God Almighty”, while some of his American colleagues in Vietnam were later to call him “Super-Brit”. |
| He went from Oxford to Kenya in 1958 to work for the Colonial Office on a project to repair some of the damage done by the British in the rural relocation campaign they forced on the people in order to isolate Mau Mau fighters. It was somehow right that Ian should have had just a little bit to do with the end of empire, and also that that little bit was on the good side of the ledger rather than the bad. The folding table at which he used to lay down the law in Swahili at village meetings stayed with him ever afterwards. | He went from Oxford to Kenya in 1958 to work for the Colonial Office on a project to repair some of the damage done by the British in the rural relocation campaign they forced on the people in order to isolate Mau Mau fighters. It was somehow right that Ian should have had just a little bit to do with the end of empire, and also that that little bit was on the good side of the ledger rather than the bad. The folding table at which he used to lay down the law in Swahili at village meetings stayed with him ever afterwards. |
| After Kenya, he took a tramp steamer in 1960 from Newcastle to Montreal, where he slid into journalism in a typically insouciant and slightly mysterious way. He had no job, so he “pounded the pavement” (his words) looking for one. Without any journalistic qualifications and having thus far shown, according to his family, no inclination in that direction, he got one with the Roy Thomson organisation as a reporter in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario. He did so well that he was sent to a new paper in a remote uranium boom town. As the youthful editor of the Elliot Lake Standard, he was involved in protests against inadequate safety regulations. | After Kenya, he took a tramp steamer in 1960 from Newcastle to Montreal, where he slid into journalism in a typically insouciant and slightly mysterious way. He had no job, so he “pounded the pavement” (his words) looking for one. Without any journalistic qualifications and having thus far shown, according to his family, no inclination in that direction, he got one with the Roy Thomson organisation as a reporter in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario. He did so well that he was sent to a new paper in a remote uranium boom town. As the youthful editor of the Elliot Lake Standard, he was involved in protests against inadequate safety regulations. |
| Returning to London in 1961, he parlayed these backwoods triumphs into a job as a subeditor in the London office of the Guardian. That office, then subordinate to Manchester, was to prove to be the seedbed of the generation which emerged to run and to write the paper toward the end of Alastair Hetherington’s editorship and during the 20 years afterwards when Preston was in charge. The small staff included or came to include John Cole, McKie, Harry Jackson and Hella Pick. | |
| Ian wrote rather good film reviews, and was at the Venice film festival when trouble flared in Aden. He was the nearest Guardian man to the story and was promptly dispatched there. That assignment, and several others, gave him the right profile when Hetherington was casting around for a man to send to Vietnam. The circumstances were delicate. The Guardian had been against the war until Hetherington himself visited and was persuaded that the American effort should be supported. Huge ructions followed at the paper, Hetherington retreated a little but nobody was satisfied. Ian had to walk a narrow ground. He did so with a marked regard for accuracy and balance, but also with a great deal of sympathy for the ordinary people of South Vietnam. | Ian wrote rather good film reviews, and was at the Venice film festival when trouble flared in Aden. He was the nearest Guardian man to the story and was promptly dispatched there. That assignment, and several others, gave him the right profile when Hetherington was casting around for a man to send to Vietnam. The circumstances were delicate. The Guardian had been against the war until Hetherington himself visited and was persuaded that the American effort should be supported. Huge ructions followed at the paper, Hetherington retreated a little but nobody was satisfied. Ian had to walk a narrow ground. He did so with a marked regard for accuracy and balance, but also with a great deal of sympathy for the ordinary people of South Vietnam. |
| Going to Vietnam also marked a turning point in his personal life. He proposed to Lydia Giles, his then girlfriend, by asking her “Would you like to go to Vietnam?” Lydia, an analyst at the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department, said yes, and they married in 1968. She left the FO, picked up journalistic strings of her own, and the two were a formidable team, although they had to be scrupulous (or secretive) about what they did and did not share. Rare among western correspondents, Ian and Lydia made many South Vietnamese friends, some of whom are still close today. | Going to Vietnam also marked a turning point in his personal life. He proposed to Lydia Giles, his then girlfriend, by asking her “Would you like to go to Vietnam?” Lydia, an analyst at the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department, said yes, and they married in 1968. She left the FO, picked up journalistic strings of her own, and the two were a formidable team, although they had to be scrupulous (or secretive) about what they did and did not share. Rare among western correspondents, Ian and Lydia made many South Vietnamese friends, some of whom are still close today. |
| Ian came back to Britain in 1970 to be foreign editor, initially in Manchester, and set about the transformation of the department. He hired specialist subs, created a full-time foreign desk, and made useful deals with the Washington Post and, later, Le Monde. The Guardian had had an intermittently brilliant but often shambolic foreign service: now it had a professional one. Although money was short, Ian quickly squeezed out enough for a couple more staff postings so that the paper remained competitive with its rivals. He was an excellent foreign editor, acute in his guidance, assiduous about messaging and thanking people in the field but not prone to micromanagement. At Christmas he sent cables reading “Salve in partibus infidelium” (Greetings to those in heathen regions) to the more far-flung correspondents, including me; I succeeded him in Vietnam. | Ian came back to Britain in 1970 to be foreign editor, initially in Manchester, and set about the transformation of the department. He hired specialist subs, created a full-time foreign desk, and made useful deals with the Washington Post and, later, Le Monde. The Guardian had had an intermittently brilliant but often shambolic foreign service: now it had a professional one. Although money was short, Ian quickly squeezed out enough for a couple more staff postings so that the paper remained competitive with its rivals. He was an excellent foreign editor, acute in his guidance, assiduous about messaging and thanking people in the field but not prone to micromanagement. At Christmas he sent cables reading “Salve in partibus infidelium” (Greetings to those in heathen regions) to the more far-flung correspondents, including me; I succeeded him in Vietnam. |
| He was also displaying the attention to detail, to technology, and to practicalities like adequate insurance for those in risky places that made him in 1978 an obvious choice as joint deputy editor and managing editor. The physical plant the Guardian used was increasingly obsolete and unreliable and Ian oversaw its replacement by new presses and, ultimately, by the introduction of the Atex computer system. Along the way were numerous make do and mend patch ups, threats of industrial action, a redesign of the paper, and the takeover of the Observer, which had to be squeezed into the paper’s cramped London premises in Farringdon Road. Most of this work was unavoidably unsatisfactory in that there were never any perfect solutions. Even if there had been more money, the technology was too undeveloped, which meant executives faced a constant choice between being left behind or installing equipment that could become redundant almost as soon as they turned their backs. | He was also displaying the attention to detail, to technology, and to practicalities like adequate insurance for those in risky places that made him in 1978 an obvious choice as joint deputy editor and managing editor. The physical plant the Guardian used was increasingly obsolete and unreliable and Ian oversaw its replacement by new presses and, ultimately, by the introduction of the Atex computer system. Along the way were numerous make do and mend patch ups, threats of industrial action, a redesign of the paper, and the takeover of the Observer, which had to be squeezed into the paper’s cramped London premises in Farringdon Road. Most of this work was unavoidably unsatisfactory in that there were never any perfect solutions. Even if there had been more money, the technology was too undeveloped, which meant executives faced a constant choice between being left behind or installing equipment that could become redundant almost as soon as they turned their backs. |
| Ian was to the fore in coping with all of this. He was efficient, surprisingly so for a man who put up a notice when he first worked at the paper asking the cleaners not to tidy under his desk, as he often threw things down there he might need later. The Guardian had an easier transition in these years of change than most of its rivals, and much of the credit for that belongs to Ian. He retired in 1995, but carried on as co-director with Preston of the Guardian Foundation, whose aim of assisting the development of journalism in countries whose media are struggling to cope was dear to his heart. | Ian was to the fore in coping with all of this. He was efficient, surprisingly so for a man who put up a notice when he first worked at the paper asking the cleaners not to tidy under his desk, as he often threw things down there he might need later. The Guardian had an easier transition in these years of change than most of its rivals, and much of the credit for that belongs to Ian. He retired in 1995, but carried on as co-director with Preston of the Guardian Foundation, whose aim of assisting the development of journalism in countries whose media are struggling to cope was dear to his heart. |
| Ian and Lydia kept bees on the rooftop of their home in Islington, north London. Some years there were prodigious quantities of honey and, in a forgivable piece of self-indulgence, Ian asked the paper’s graphics department to produce labels for the pots. They show a flight of bees in V-shaped military formation. The sentiment underneath read “The Wright Stuff”. | Ian and Lydia kept bees on the rooftop of their home in Islington, north London. Some years there were prodigious quantities of honey and, in a forgivable piece of self-indulgence, Ian asked the paper’s graphics department to produce labels for the pots. They show a flight of bees in V-shaped military formation. The sentiment underneath read “The Wright Stuff”. |
| In a privately printed memoir that he wrote for family and friends in 2012, Ian recalled that his father, who had a warm wit, said of him on one occasion: “He may be fit to make waistcoat armholes, though I doubt it.” Ian also wrote, in the same memoir, that the Methodism which sustained his parents “carried with it the duty of service in the world”. It turned out that Ian could make waistcoat armholes, and that he could indeed be of service. | In a privately printed memoir that he wrote for family and friends in 2012, Ian recalled that his father, who had a warm wit, said of him on one occasion: “He may be fit to make waistcoat armholes, though I doubt it.” Ian also wrote, in the same memoir, that the Methodism which sustained his parents “carried with it the duty of service in the world”. It turned out that Ian could make waistcoat armholes, and that he could indeed be of service. |
| He is survived by Lydia and their son, Oliver, and grandson, Frederick; and by his brother, Douglas, and sisters, Margaret and Rosalind. | He is survived by Lydia and their son, Oliver, and grandson, Frederick; and by his brother, Douglas, and sisters, Margaret and Rosalind. |
| • Ian Wright, journalist, born 9 March 1934; died 18 March 2016 | • Ian Wright, journalist, born 9 March 1934; died 18 March 2016 |