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GEORGE GLENTON (1920 - 2009)

13/01/2010

 

 George Glenton, who died on 28 December 2009, was one of the founding members of the Media Society.  The idea of such a body was first broached in 1972 by Bob Farmer, the General Secretary of the Institute of Journalists (the IoJ later added the word 'Chartered' to its name in celebration of the centenary of its Royal Charter).  George Glenton was at that time President of the Institute, and so was much involved in the proposals for a merger between the Institute and the National Union of Journalists.  It was out of the disagreements over the future protection of professional standards that the Media Society was born.

 

 
George Glenton was a North Yorkshire man, from Scarborough, and his career was, as he put it, "a compelling mixture of slat water and printers' ink".  As a young journalist at the start of World War Two, he seized an opportunity to join the crew of a merchant navy vessel at Port Talbot in 1942, and spent the war years in often hectic convoy duties in the Mediterranean, experiences he described in No Safe Haven (Navigator Books 1995).
 
After the war he returned to journalism, first in Scotland and then in Fleet Street, where he joined the News Chronicle, as a writer on crime.  With Bill Pattinson he memorably set out the end of that famous newspaper in 1960 (The Last Chronicle of Bouverie Street, George Allen and Unwin, 1963).  George subsequently went to the Daily Mirror and retired as its chief crime writer in 1985. He had never lost his interest in maritime matters however, and from its launch in 1967 until the end of 2006 he contributed a regular column under the name 'Meridian' to the award-winning industry newspaper The Port of London News. 
 
Only in his last column was his identity revealed to its readers. 
 

Roger Bush, 2010 
 


Roger Bush sat on the Council of the Media Society for 15 years (1994 - 2005) and has been a member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists since 1961.  He served as its 100th President in 1995-96.

George retained his interest in the Society and was a regular attendee at meetings of its Council for many years. 

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