My friend Alan Lyons, who has died from a lung condition aged 75 after suffering from COPD, was a Guardian news subeditor for around 37 years.
He was born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, and adopted at the age of three by Kath and Eddie Lyons. Eddie was with the Royal Corps of Army Music, and Kath was a caretaker. After travelling around with the Army, the family settled in York, where Alan attended Archbishop Holgate’s school, leaving at 18 to become a trainee journalist with Hull & Grimsby Newspapers, 1967-70.
He moved to the Yorkshire Evening Press in York, and then to the Daily Mail in Manchester. Between newspaper jobs he worked as a bus conductor, and at Rowntree’s chocolate factory in the city, and wrote a novel. He joined the Guardian as a home news subeditor in the mid-1970s, and also filed Saturday football reports for the Mail on Sunday for a number of years.
At the Guardian, Alan helped to train colleagues in the early days of new technology, and was a union official for a while. A number of colleagues have mentioned how helpful he was when they first joined the paper. In later years at the Guardian he returned to York to live.
He played an active part in Labour politics in the city, and performed in Shakespeare plays and in the York Mystery Plays. He also gained an English degree from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, in 1995, and an MA from York University in Contemporary Writers: Fictions of Conflict two years later.
His travels included living in a kibbutz in Israel, trips to Spain, Germany and Italy, an extensive tour of South America that took him to the southernmost tip of Chile, and a final trip abroad to Jordan with family members.
After his retirement in 2012, he volunteered at the Amnesty bookshop in York. Although increasingly confined to his flat, he was able to celebrate his 75th birthday with family at the Minster Inn – one of his favourite pubs in York, along with the Blue Bell – earlier this year.
He was passionate about Manchester City and Bob Dylan, politics and literature.
Alan is survived by two cousins, Molly and Linda.
