My friend and former colleague Desmond Christy, who has died aged 71, was a journalist and intellectual with a particular interest in German language and culture. His favourites were Mahler, Schütz, Cranach, Friedrich, Goethe’s Faust. To the end he was translating Kant, for pleasure.
Des joined the Guardian in 1980 as a subeditor on the arts and books desks, later working on Guardian Europe. He also did a fair bit of writing, including theatre reviews and a diary for Guardian Europe. His tastes were highbrow, but he unbent when standing in for Nancy Banks-Smith as a TV critic, having fun with The X-Files.
