My journalistic mentor and friend Maurice Woods, who has died aged 98, was the Parliamentary Press Gallery’s oldest surviving former member.
Maurice was a born wordsmith – his middle name, Sewell, reflected a family connection to the author of Black Beauty, Anna Sewell – and his outstanding writing ability led him to a career on the Eastern Daily Press. For 15 years from 1965 he was the paper’s London editor (and its man at Westminster).
His responsibilities in that post included being the chief leader writer. His talent for the pithy phrase and his liberal (but non-party political) leanings were well illustrated in an editorial in the early 1970s, which began: “Enoch Powell is often applauded for saying what he thinks. He cannot be praised, of course, for thinking what he says.”
Maurice was as good with the spoken word as with the written, and he acquired many new devotees in his year as Press Gallery chairman in 1972. The lunches he presided over became must-go-to events at which he was the star turn, regardless of whichever cabinet minister was the guest speaker.
He liked both Harold Wilson and Ted Heath. He was even able to engage the latter in small-talk and, what is more, proved capable of getting Margaret Thatcher to laugh at herself.
The issues on which Maurice had strong views included the EU. He was a passionate supporter of British membership and for many years held the chairmanship of the British section of the Association of European Journalists.
Maurice was born and grew up in Corton, Suffolk, the son of Oscar, a postal worker, and his wife, Agnes. He began his journalistic career on the Lowestoft Journal in 1935. After serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps – mainly in Africa – during the second world war, he returned to journalism and was appointed the editor of the Dereham and Fakenham Times in Norfolk.
Five years later he moved to the Manchester Guardian, but left in 1955 when he was appointed the Eastern Daily Press’s labour and industrial correspondent in London. Ten years later he became its London editor and led its political coverage.
Maurice was also a great authority on the Norfolk dialect, and for many years wrote “News from Dumpton” stories in the dialect for the weekly papers in the county. He took as much care with these as with his news reports from Westminster and his leader-writing.
His wife, Kathie, died in 2002. His is survived by his son, Mark, grandson, Morten, and two great-grandaughters, Molly and Billie.
