NOTED JOURNALIST

Evening Star, Issue 25677, 28 December 1945, Page 6

NOTED JOURNALIST

RETIREMENT FROM FLEET STREET The retirement at the end of this year of Mr Janies Bone, London editor of the ‘ Manchester Guardian,’ after 43 years’ service with the paper, will be like removing a landmark from Fleet Street, where Mr Bone has served his journal for 34 years. His successor will be Mr E. A. Montague, a son of C. E. Montague. A Scot, like many Scots who have gone to London and made it their own, Mr Bone is an authority oil London’s architecture. His delightful and gracefully written book, ‘The London Perambulator,’ reveals many a hidden and forgotten corner of the city.

Although well past 70 years of age, Mr Bone was constantly at his desk through the height of the London blitz, and, except for a short visit to the United States, was there throughout the whole of the war period. ft was during his return voyage from the United States that Mr Bone demonstrated his indestructible quality, lie had l undergone in New York a serious operation, and was still under the care of a doctor. In the Atlantic in midwinter his ship was torpedoed, and he and his fellow-passengers had to take to the boats, in which they spent six hours before being picked up by a tramp. The voyage to Scotland was completed in indescribably overcrowded conditions, Mr Bone himself having to sleep on the floor under a table. On arrival in Scotland, while' the other passengers sought beds and hot baths, Air Bone sat down at his typewriter and sent to his paper a description of his experiences At that time he was 73 years ot age. Back in London, he sawisthe war out. Now he is retiring from the scene of the labours of as stout a newspaperman as ever breathed-.

In a letter to a friend in Christchurch, Air Bone writes: “We are tidying up things here now, and London, while shabby as ever, is a little neater and the lights are shining out everywhere, a portent, I hope, of the mental lights to come. It is a little difficult to believe in this old land that new things hanpen in a night or in five years, but there are some differences alroadv and a lot of new hopes.”