My father, Alex Kirby, who has died of cancer aged 86, was a well-respected journalist – at the BBC and elsewhere – and, despite beginning his career in the church, ended up dedicating much of his life to chronicling the climate crisis.
Following a degree in theology at Keble College, Oxford, he trained for the priesthood at the Anglo-Catholic theological college in Mirfield, Yorkshire, and after ordination, became a deacon in the Isle of Dogs, east London.
However, his ecclesiastical life was not to last and soon Alex’s true vocation came calling when he became editor in 1970 of Race Today, the house journal of the Institute of Race Relations. There he met Belinda Andrews and they married in 1972.
A period of voluntary work in west Africa was followed by two years at the World Council of Churches’ Programme to Combat Racism, based in Geneva, and in 1978 Alex joined the BBC World Service, the same year his first child was born. Originally employed in the newsroom in London, Alex became a BBC freelance in Algeria, stationed there for a year along with his young family, which now included a second son.
In 1987, he was given the role that was to define the rest of his life – that of environment and agriculture correspondent for the BBC, a job that took him all over the world and allowed him to fulfil his passion for travel and meeting people. Alex then drew on his previous life in the church with a spell as the BBC’s religious affairs correspondent; in this role he provided part of the radio coverage for the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Alex left the BBC in 2005 and became a freelance journalist until, striking up with a group of former journalists – among them the Guardian’s Paul Brown and Tim Radford – he started in 2013 the Climate News Network, a media organisation committed to providing free and accessible stories about the evolving climate crisis, which they ran for nine years. In this role, he wrote articles for the Guardian over a several years.
Alex was born in Liverpool to Frederic, an insurance clerk, and Beryl (nee Crawshaw), a homemaker, and had three older brothers, John, Mike and Jim, on whom he doted. Growing up in Sefton Park during the second world war provided Alex with many happy memories, from sharing sardine sandwiches in the family bomb shelter to accompanying his father, an air-raid warden, on patrols around the bomb-ravaged neighbourhood.
Aged eight, Alex was sent to board at a preparatory school in Kent - an institution he despised due to the sadistic punishments he witnessed being meted out by those in charge, which instilled in him a lifelong aversion to private education. When Alex was only 13, his father died, a loss that affected the family greatly. Life improved when he left Kent for King’s College Taunton and from there to Oxford, where he made lifelong friends.
When not working, Alex loved spending time with family (he was looking forward to the birth of his third grandchild), holidays in Cornwall, walking his dogs on the South Downs or visiting pubs with friends.
He is survived by Belinda, his sons, Thomas and me, and his grandchildren, Ramses and Filou.
