WATCH THIS SPACE
posters and other ephemera. Rejected for call-up in the Second
To be sold as one lot, it is expected World War owing to his disabilities, to sell for £6,000 to £8,000, but could he joined the editorial staff of the make more, particularly in the face of Daily Mirror in Manchester in 1943, museum or institutional bidding. moving to Fleet Street two years later
Ronald G. Bedford OBE – awarded as a feature writer with Reuters. for his services to journalism in the He was appointed the news New Year’s Honours of 1982 – was agency’s chief reporter (UK) in 1946, born in 1921 in Walton, near but returned to the Mirror in London Wakefield, the only child of a railway in 1947 as a feature writer, switching footplateman. He was educated at in 1950 to scientific and medical Wakefield Academy and learned to news stories. He was made Science play the piano, winning the open Editor in 1962. class for under-14s at the 1934 In addition to his coverage of space London Musical Festival. exploration, he reported on other
He subsequently joined two jazz memorable milestones: the bands and continued to play development of peaceful uses of throughout his life wherever there atomic energy; the discovery of the was a piano, be it at a Fleet Street pub DNA double helix; the first heart and or the South Pole. He said it opened organ transplants and creation of many doors for him. “test-tube” babies by IVF.
He began his career in journalism He was also instrumental in getting running errands and sweeping the the Corneal Graft Act of 1952 onto printroom floor at the Wakefield the statute book, legislation that was Express, before being taken on as a understandably dear to his heart. junior reporter at the town’s South His quest for stories took him to Elmsall and Hemsworth Express. the Sahara where engineers were
searching for oil and An autographed
natural gas; India to visit Nasa picture of
research stations; James van
Greenland and Alaskan Hoften’s space
sites of missile earlywarning walk to deploy radar installations one of three
and medical and scientific communication
centres in Israel, Japan, satellites from
Australia and French the Space
Guiana. Shuttle in 1985
His skill was his innate
RONNIE BEDFORD died in 2012 aged 90 and, honouring his wish that the archive should be released “to give as much pleasure to people as possible”, his wife Thelma has consigned it to a sale at The Canterbury Auction Galleries.
The sale on Tuesday, July 31, is just one year away from the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing. ability to make the most complex technical detail understandable and interesting to the man in the street.
Ronnie was also a member of the Association of British Science Writers, and a founder member and chairman from 1977 to 1980 of the Medical Journalists’ Association, whose members presented him with a special achievement award some 20 years after had retired.
In his later years he wrote for BMA News and the British Medical Association newsletter, but arthritis and worsening sight blighted his final years, spent in Broadstairs, Kent.