Mail man behind iconic Troubles photo dies at 82
BUT for a tap on the shoulder as he snatched 40 winks on the sofa in the foyer of Londonderry’s City Hotel, he would have missed it.
Ten hours on his feet, cameras at the ready had yielded nothing newsworthy. Now all hell had broken loose.
It was August 12, 1969, the defining day of the Ulster Troubles and the Daily Mail’s Clive Limpkin, who has died aged 82, was, thanks to that wakeup call, in the thick of the action.
Of all the pictures he took that day as an Apprentice Boy’s march descended into chaos and infamy, one has stood the test of time.
It is of a young boy in an old Second World War gas mask poised with a petrol bomb in his hand.
More powerful than any written word, that image went round the world and spoke not just of the sectarian divide in a British city but also foretold the terrible events that were to grip Northern Ireland for decades. The picture later won Clive the prestigious Robert Capa Award, the first time it had gone to someone other than an American photographer.
But it was just one of many brilliant and nerveless news photos in a career brimful of triumphs.
Limpkin was always at the sharp end, chasing runaway Labour minister John Stonehouse in Australia and Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs in Brazil, and smuggling himself into Albania when freedom came to the last outpost of European communism in 1990.
Always urbane, he was on the Daily Sketch, which later merged with the Mail, when he landed his Londonderry scoop. His pictures were published in a book The Battle of Bogside, reissued last year.
Limpkin leaves a wife Alex and adult children Zissou and Chloe.