I started reading the Guardian in 1963 because I wanted to know what my parents were whispering about, and why Lady Chatterley’s Lover was hidden behind the gramophone records. In those innocent days, a 14-year-old like me had to look up the word “prostitute” in a dictionary. The Manchester Guardian, as it then was, was delivered daily to our house, and the trick was to read it before my father finished the crossword and made it into firelighters. That was a narrow window unless it was “that pesky clergyman”. I had to supply the classical and biblical answers, but today I can’t answer any clues, even when my cousin, Puck, is the setter. So I went for Lord Altrincham (John Grigg) and Lena Jeger’s columns on the back page, then skipped the sport to read my favourites, Mary Stott and Katharine Whitehorn.
We liked the northern news, as I still do, with most of my family living in Leeds. When I worked in a theological college in India my parents had the Guardian Weekly sent out and I circulated it to eight neighbouring families. My father also posted out Posy Simmonds. In 1984 I had to rescue a colleague who was choking using the technique illustrated in the latest cartoon. Perhaps the Guardian saved her life.
I am a passionate allotmenteer and secretary of (the award-winning) Radstock in Bloom, so I always read the gardening section of Weekend magazine with great interest. The five houses I bought during my peregrination from one academic post to another were always actually great gardens which happened to have houses attached. I’m also always buying biographies recommended in your Review section, as I am trying to get a biography of Bishop Lesslie Newbigin finished, but I do not get enough time to read them (and there are piles of unfinished Guardians around the house, too).
The Guardian influenced me to become a republican, but not an atheist, and I think the coverage of Christianity has deteriorated, Giles Fraser notwithstanding. I still read the paper backwards because I am now a Labour councillor and Wednesday’s coverage of housing and social issues is essential reading. I am also our group’s spokesperson on health issues.
I think my paternal grandfather, Cllr James Jackson of Kenilworth, started the family tradition more than 100 years ago. Now my son devours it, as a hard-pressed expat working on climate change at the University of Bremen, Germany. Long may the Guardian continue.
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