Journalist who led fight for Bath dies, 89

A journalist who abandoned a successful career in Fleet Street after falling in love with Georgian Bath has died at 89.

Edward Goring, who passed away after a fall, was with the Daily Mail when his enthusiasm for the city’s architecture persuaded him that Bath was the ideal place to live and work. It led to him founding, in 1974, The Royal Crescent Society, which still flourishes.

He gave up Fleet Street in 1969 to join the Bath Chronicle, then an evening newspaper.

He wrote a column called Sul’s Day by Day five nights a week that, in the opinion of author Jan Morris, made him the pre-eminent chronicler of Bath in the 1970s. The column combined reporting and comment on local issues, sometimes humorous, occasionally irreverent and often serious and controversial.

This upset some local worthies. Soon Goring got a letter from the late Kenneth Hudson, adult education lecturer and author, warning: “The number of really influential people in Bath is limited to about 20. In the space of a very few weeks you have annoyed and antagonised 18 of them.” Twice he was threatened with libel writs – an occupational hazard for a journalist who, in his Fleet Street heyday, was once sued by Elizabeth Taylor for claiming that filming of Cleopatra was held up because she was overweight.

In his columns Goring championed the preservation of Bath. He launched a crusade against Colin Buchanan’s project for a road tunnel under the city, then accepted not only by the council but also by Bath Preservation Trust. He repeatedly attacked the planning department’s schemes for the demolition of Georgian streets for modern developments, continuing the destruction begun in the 1960s.

Adam Fergusson, author of The Sack of Bath, published in 1973, paid him this tribute: “Edward Goring, in the front line, has written more effectively to save Bath than anyone else.”

A collection of his columns from the Chronicle, entitled By the Waters of Sul, were published in 2006.

He left the Bath Chronicle after eight years only because of a chance to achieve his ambition to be an editor. He moved to Regency Brighton to edit the weekly Brighton and Hove Gazette, where he continued to campaign on conservation issues.

After leaving school at 15 to start on a weekly in his native Staffordshire, Goring worked on evening papers in Nottingham and Sheffield before joining the Daily Mail as a temporary extra reporter for its Coronation team in 1953. Two weeks later he was taken on the staff. In 1956 he was appointed the paper’s show-business writer and several years later became a subeditor.

Goring’s hobbies included DIY and motorcycles. He lived at 4 Rivers Street, completely restoring its Georgian features, and later moved to 10 Royal Crescent, single-handedly creating several flats.

In 1974 he founded The Royal Crescent Society and was its first chairman.

He took early retirement in 1988 and continued riding high-powered motorcycles until he was 70, having always preferred the freedom of two wheels to matrimony.

Edward Goring, journalist. January 28, 1931-July 23, 2020.