Tributes have been paid to a former Lord Mayor of Liverpool who was instrumental in the city’s European Capital of Culture bid.
Former colleagues have lined up to pay their respects to Frank Doran MBE after he lost his long battle with Alzheimer's disease, aged 72. Mr Doran was Lord Mayor of the city in 1996-7 and, as cabinet member for culture in 2008, helped secure Liverpool’s transformational status as European Capital of Culture. During his time at the Town Hall, the former councillor also flew to New York to personally present Yoko Ono with John Lennon’s Freeman of the City.
Mr Doran spoke bravely about his fight with Alzheimer's, having been diagnosed in 2013 and said: “I have Alzheimer’s, it doesn’t have me. I am fighting it with the same vigour I needed one hundred miles behind enemy lines in Iraq.” Away from the Town Hall, Mr Doran served in the Parachute Regiment for more than a decade before spending 25 years in the intelligence corps.
