My friend Chris Peachment, who has died aged 74, was a journalist, art critic and author who wrote for the Times and Independent newspapers, as well as historical fiction and thrillers.
In the early 1980s he was film editor of the London listings magazine Time Out, where I worked with him as a senior subeditor. I soon learned that if you changed a comma in his copy there would probably be consequences – but then you mostly didn’t need to.
