My father, John Whatmore, who has died aged 92, was a subeditor on the Guardian for two decades. He joined the paper in Manchester in 1973 and three years later moved to Surrey, as he had been offered the chance to work on the foreign desk in the Guardian’s offices in Farringdon Road, central London. He worked the night shift there until his retirement in 1992.
Born in Sparkhill, Birmingham, he was the youngest of three children of Gertrude (nee Perrins) and Reginald Whatmore, a jeweller. He started his education at English Martyrs’ RC school and was evacuated as a nine-year-old, just before the second world war broke out, to Whitwick in Leicestershire. He returned to Birmingham after nine months as he was so unhappy, and had to endure the regular bombing raids. Eventually the family moved to the comparative safety of Sutton Coldfield.
He did not totally escape the war there however and watched American Sherman tanks roll past his door to a local testing ground, and would regularly ride his bicycle to the local airfield to watch the bombers take off and return with their bay doors open.
After leaving Leighton House school, Harborne, in 1951 he joined the Birmingham Gazette as a reporter, but two years later was offered the post of assistant editor on the Manufacturing Clothier magazine. The job title sounded grand, but he did not actually have any staff below him.
John moved to Plymouth in 1955 to work at the Western Morning News. There he met Eileen Hart, who was also a reporter, and they were married in 1959. John and Eileen were both members of the Plymouth Aero Club, where they learned to fly aircraft including Tiger Moth biplanes.
In 1963 John was offered a post as a subeditor of the Bulawayo Chronicle in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He went out first to set up a home and was followed out by Eileen with two small children – my sisters, Julia and Nicola – in tow. I was born in Bulawayo.
John really loved the African lifestyle, but the political situation changed in 1965, when the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) was announced, and the newspaper was being censored by men in grey suits demanding to see every article. The journalists found their own way to show what was happening, by leaving large blank areas on the censored pages. John became chief subeditor on the Rhodesian Herald in 1968, but by 1971 he knew it was time to leave Africa. Our family moved to a small village in Oxfordshire and John worked on the Oxford Mail, before moving to Manchester and the Guardian.
During one of his regular holidays and sabbaticals, he cycled around Israel to celebrate his 50th birthday. His love of cycling and walking never left him, and he wrote books including The CTC Book of Cycling (1983) and edited The Shell Book of British Walks (1987).
His marriage to Eileen ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Ann (nee Dean), whom he married in 2006, his children, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
