Augustus Tilley
Daily Telegraph reporter ‘man and boy’ whose work paved the way for the modern obituaries page
AUGUSTUS TILLEY, who has died aged 97, was the modest but extremely able and versatile Daily Telegraph reporter responsible for preparing the way for the expanded obituaries department which came into existence on his retirement in 1986.
For the previous 60 years the paper had been primarily committed to its news coverage, and while readers liked to be told that significant figures had died, generally little space was devoted to them. Most of those placed in charge of obits may have given sterling service earlier in their careers but were not expected to shine.
When Tilley was appointed by the news desk in 1973, he was informed that his job was to keep as much as he could out of the paper. A six-paragraph story about a death on the Court and Social page was sufficient most days unless some newsworthy figure clearly deserved more. A few “nuggets” – career summaries in note form invented by the 1st Viscount Camrose, the proprietor in the Second World War – could be added to taste. And when a suitable candidate appeared after the first edition there was a late obit man to scrape up a few pars and ensure we were “covered” on anything in the other papers.
The son of a ladies shirtmaker, Henry Edwin Augustus Tilley was born at Camberwell in South London on December 11 1921 and won a scholarship to Alleyn’s School, where he developed a lifelong passion for cricket. He began his Fleet Street career as an office boy at the Birmingham Post during the Blitz, then became a reporter on the Beckenham Journal.
On being called up by the RAF, Tilley spent four years as ground crew maintaining the radios of No 135 Hurricane squadron as it moved to Burma, Calcutta, and Akyab on the Arakan coast, where he was strafed by Japanese fighters which destroyed all the British aircraft on the ground.
When the squadron was disbanded in 1945 Tilley returned to the Beckenham Journal then the South London Observer, from which he resigned to find himself jobless for five months. He used the time to study philosophy at Morley College, where he met his future wife, Iris Miklaucich, a Great Ormond Street nurse.
Moving north, he became a subeditor and then a reporter with the Telegraph in Manchester before transferring to London in 1953.
Over 20 years in the newsroom, “Gus” showed sound judgment and ability to cover any story, from the Garter ceremony at Windsor, wearing morning coat, to train crashes and perceptive constituency profiles at general elections. He lamented the disappearance of gas lamps from London’s streets and the death of Guy the Gorilla at his Regent’s Park home.
Settling down as obits man in the features department in 1973, he adopted the maxim “Surprise is the game”. Writing almost everything himself, he relied on occasional help from an Indian Army colonel, a barrister and a few retired reporters whom he called “my trusties”.
Not all produced the finest prose but Gus, as he was known, could turn their work into something that could win a place on a middle news page. While playing the expected straight bat with serious subjects, he allowed himself some leeway with subjects in the arts, such as Gerald Wilde, the model for the seedy eccentric artist in Joyce Carey’s novel The Horse’s Mouth, whom he described as living on welfare in a stable and spending most of his money on drink while declaring: “Life is pure unadulterated hell.”
On discovering that the ladies in the office library referred to him as “the angel of Death” he commented that there were very few angels in Fleet Street. The byline “By Augustus Tilley” inevitably caught the eye of readers beyond the paper. His work was celebrated in Private Eye with a spoof Telegraph column consisting entirely of nuggets about knights, while The Sloane Ranger Handbook encouraged dutiful children to contact him when a parent slipped away.
When Hugh Massingberd was appointed obituaries editor, Tilley warned him that the job was the most stressful one on the paper, adding that he coped with it by meditating.
He was proudest of being a Telegraph reporter “man and boy”. On his last day, he recalled standing for more than a week outside the dying Winston Churchill’s house from 11am to 7pm before the great man finally died early on a Saturday morning, when there was no Daily Telegraph to report it the next day.
Gus Tilley practised Tai chi daily for 30 years and was a Congregationalist. His wife Iris died in 2009; one of their daughters also predeceased him, and he is survived by their son and two other daughters.
Augustus Tilley, born December 11 1921, died March 9 2019