My father, Michael Hanson, who has died aged 78, was property correspondent of Country Life magazine for 27 years and was named Property Journalist of the Year five times between 1976 and 1995.
At his most prolific, Michael was writing 400 articles a year as either architectural correspondent or property correspondent for publications including the Sunday Telegraph, Estates Gazette, the Guardian, Investors Review, the Evening Standard, What House and Homes Overseas. For the past 20 years he wrote for Showhouse.
He started his career as press officer at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and went on to become the editor in chief for the RICS journals and founder editor of Chartered Surveyor Weekly, now known as Property Week. He was at various times editor of Property Letter, London Property File, Show House, Planahome and the Best of British Homes, as well as group property editor of Condé Nast magazines. From 1985 until 1987 he was president of International Building Press.
While working as press and public relations officer at the Royal Institute of British Architects, he wrote the acclaimed 2,000 Years of London (1967), followed by Famous Architects of the City of London (1971). Michael’s primary architectural love was the work of Edwin Lutyens and he was a committee member and the property market specialist for the Lutyens Trust until his death, although he never completed the work on Lutyens that he had always wanted to leave as his legacy.
Son of Peter, drummer with a jazz band, and Ivy, Michael was born in Eastbourne, East Sussex. The family soon moved to London, and Michael went to St Marylebone grammar school, where he was editor of the school magazine. During the summer after leaving school he worked in the estate office at Whiteley’s department store, and then enrolled to study at the College of Estate Management in Kensington, graduating with a London University BSc. Michael inherited a love of music from his father and passed on this knowledge by running a jazz club at Pimlico Youth Centre.
Working as a research assistant at the Building Research Unit while studying for an MSc, he met Janet Bloomfield. Cheekily, on April Fools’ Day 1960 he took her to see the London production of Make Me an Offer and made her an offer of marriage that she did not refuse.
Janet survives him, along with his two daughters, Venetia and me, and six grandchildren, Melissa, Vanessa, Ellie, Billy, Connor and Poppy.
