Bernadette Mcnulty
Arts journalist whose writing was full of warmth and humour
BERNADETTE MCNULTY, who has died aged 43, having drowned while on holiday in Oman, was for 11 years a music and arts commissioning editor at
The Daily Telegraph.
Her writing was acutely observant, full of warmth and inflected with the dry humour of her native Birmingham. She covered a broad range of culture and had a strong visual sense, but it was as a music journalist and an interviewer that she was best known.
It was typical of her sideways view of life that her favourite gig, starring Morrissey, was one that she did not attend. In 1988, having queued all day to see the singer’s first solo outing at Wolverhampton Civic Hall, she failed to get in, “but the sense loving music brought with it – excitement, drama, danger, high emotion, camaraderie and standing in the proximity of amazingly cool looking kids – stayed with me”.
Her tastes ranged from old stalwarts such as Prince and Kate Bush to the new, such as the English punk duo Sleaford Mods. She responded with a strong emotional tug and vivid delight, catching what it felt like to be in the room.
Describing the audience for a Prince concert in Birmingham, she observed that “in sweet deference to their idol”, the audience had donned random items of purple clothing, giving the appearance of “a giant box of Quality Street spilt across the arena floor”.
Bernadette Teresa Mcnulty was born in Selly Oak on April 25 1974. A happy childhood was marred by sadness. Her father Bernard, a construction worker, was left disabled by an on-site accident and her mother Julie, a nurse, developed breast cancer. Bernadette took a year out of St Paul’s Girls School, Birmingham, to care for her before she died, and then returned to education at Cadbury College, Birmingham.
While reading English at Leeds University, she spent a year at the University of Salzburg on the Erasmus scheme; a keen independent traveller, in 1997 she visited Japan on a teaching exchange programme.
After an MA in Journalism at Goldsmiths College, London, she got her first job in journalism, on the Japanese English-language paper The Daily Yomiuri. From 2002, she freelanced at the Guardian, Independent on Sunday and Harper’s Bazaar, before joining the Telegraph in 2005.
Recently she had contributed to the Observer, Financial Times and Radio Times before she was appointed deputy arts editor at the i newspaper last year. Her essay on Paul Mccartney’s Yesterday for the FT’S “Life of a Song” series was used in a book.
Bernadette Mcnulty was kind and funny; she could appear solemn, but her smile, when it broke, was broad and irresistible. Elegantly dressed in brilliant colour, she would scour thrift shops to create a style that gave the sharpest fashionista a run for her money. She was a dancer in the 2012 London Paralympics’ opening ceremony, where her main worry was the costume: “The effect is less Renaissance beauty and more Star Trek alien princess crossed with an Oompa Loompa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Tragically, given the nature of her death, she loved swimming, and the way it lent grace to daily life, “making your immediate surroundings fade and the chatter of life subside”.
She had resilience and a strong sense of social responsibility. She volunteered for Crisis at Christmas and was godmother to children of her many friends. She mentored a young girl under the Chance UK scheme, which gives youngsters experiencing difficulties confidence and support.
She recently described Ragnar Kjartansson’s installation The Sky in a Room as “like being part of an attempt to conjure beauty out of nothing”. That seems to stand for everything she made of her life.
Bernadette Mcnulty is survived by her brother Dennis, and her cousin Joe.
Bernadette Mcnulty, born April 25 1974, died March 2 2018