Angus Macleod, Scottish editor of the Times, who has died of cancer aged 63, was one of a formidable team of talented young journalists who passed through the Scotsman's London office in the 1970s and 80s on the way to glittering careers. They included Jim Naughtie, Martin Dowle, Andrew Marr and Gordon Brewer from Scotland; and George Jones, Andy Lorenz and Jeremy Warner from England.
Under the tutelage of David Bradford, a former chairman of the lobby, Angus blossomed into a great storygetter and enthusiast, covering the trial of the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe and the siege of the Iranian embassy before heading back to Glasgow to join the new, short-lived Sunday Standard. These were extraordinary days – from the Winter of Discontent through the early days of Thatcherism – and they were fuelled with much laughter, long boozy lunches and singing in the pub close to the "fag factory" at Mornington Crescent until closing time.
He freelanced for a couple of years before joining the Sunday Mail, and moved to the Times in 2001 as a political correspondent at Holyrood. Later he succeeded Magnus Linklater as Scottish editor, a role that enabled him to become a regular commentator and acerbic wit on radio and TV.
Angus was born into a poor family living in straitened circumstances at Plasterfield, near Stornoway, Lewis; his father worked in the tweed industry, his mother was active in the Free Presbyterian kirk. But he and his two brothers, Norman and Allan, enjoyed a classical Scots education at the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway, and Angus went on to gain a degree in English literature from Edinburgh University.
I met Angus again earlier this year for the first time in about 30 years, after I returned to Edinburgh from stints in Germany, Belgium and France, as well as London. Angus was in his element: he had become not only a senior editor at a time of critical importance for our native country in the runup to the independence referendum, but also a hugely respected, authoritative commentator on Scottish politics and society as a whole. He had also found love and happiness with Janet, whom he married in 1999.
Other changes were more shocking: he was much more serious than the ebullient Gael I'd first known, gaunt, driven as if he sensed time was running out. Drink had, he admitted, taken its toll many years before, threatening his life and career, and now he had serious medical problems requiring a "procedure". Later, as we discussed the referendum outcome – and his analysis was always spot on – he rang me from his hospital bed to give the grim news that the biopsy had revealed pancreatic cancer.
He is survived by Janet, his brothers and a stepson.
