Nigel Griffiths, a former Evening Standard assistant editor, has died from cancer, aged 68.
Griffiths, who held the post for 20 years, relished the fast-pace multi-editions of the Evening Standard and excelled at writing page one headlines that the national papers would copy the next day.
He wrote the headline “Crisis? What Crisis?” in 1979, when Prime Minister James Callaghan returned from a visit to the Caribbean to a country gripped by strikes.
After beginning his career at the Bucks Advertiser, the Luton News and Western Daily Press, he joined the Standard and was appointed “splash editor”.
At 27, he became the youngest production editor in Fleet Street.
Griffiths went on to work for Express newspapers.
He leaves a daughter Charlotte who is Diary Editor of the Mail on Sunday, and two granddaughters.
His partner was Sue Reid, special investigations editor of the Daily Mail. The couple planned to marry and had set the date until weddings were banned under the lockdown.
