Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Writer was ‘a gem, a dream for an editor’
WELL-KNOWN West Country journalist and author, Elisabeth Marleyn, who wrote for decades under the pen name of Helen Reid, has died. She was 88, writes Peter Gibbs.
She was known throughout the area as a brilliant writer and respected theatre and music critic for the Western Daily Press and a knowledgeable local historian, publishing a number of books via the Redcliffe Press.
Known as Liz to her friends and colleagues, she joined the WDP in 1960, when the morning newspaper was beginning to build circulation under its new editor, Eric Price.
She had come to Bristol as a student in the 1950s and after graduation went to the Labour Exchange, where she picked up the job of a junior reporter, although she had wanted to be a lecturer.
Liz had no formal training, could not write shorthand or drive a car, but her natural talent soon became apparent and she became the newspaper’s star writer, whether covering major national and local events or reviewing plays and concerts.
In later years her witty observations on life in “Reid Mansions” in Hotwells with her husband, Robin, whom she nicknamed M’Lud, and their cats entertained thousands of readers and her Monday column continued after her retirement in April, 1995.
Former Western Daily Press editor Ian Beales described Liz as “truly an editor’s dream”.
He said: “She was a gem: a multifaceted journalistic diamond, bylined – for reasons long forgotten – Helen Reid. Officially, she was the WDP’s chief features writer, but that is a masterpiece of understatement.
“In fact she was for decades: a superb chronicler of great state occasions and royal marriages; the women’s editor; theatre and music critic; fashion editor and style guru; and a sometimes fearsome topical opinion writer, all at the same time.
“At her brilliant best Liz was one of the wittiest writers I ever worked with and wise with it.
“She was also the fastest gun in town. She could turn round an elegant think-piece on almost any subject in half the time it would take almost anyone else. Yet she wasn’t tempted to move on. It is a remarkable record.”
Liz fell in love with Bristol during her student days and went on to write well-researched books, chronicling the history of its citizens from
Victorian times to the Second World War and beyond.
Eugene Byrne, editor of the weekly Bristol Times section of the Bristol Post, said: “Helen Reid’s achievements as a journalist sometimes overshadow the fact that she was also an important local historian. She researched and wrote a number of books which greatly added to our knowledge and understanding of Bristol’s past.
“Go Home and Do the Washing! (Broadcast Books, 2000), co-written with Lorna Brierley, introduced us to some of the most interesting and inspirational figures in Bristol’s past, one of the first – if not the first – feminist histories of the city that wasn’t for an academic readership.
“Her books on the Bristol Blitz were clear-eyed and horror-struck accounts of what the city endured in the Second World War, a necessary antidote to the nostalgia that some people have for ‘The War’. They were the products of serious and meticulous research.
“In both her books and her newspaper work she remained a journalist at heart, someone who could grip the reader’s attention and never let go. She was funny, eloquent, often outraged and capable of making us look at things from a different angle.
“As a woman, she overcame a lot of unspoken prejudices to make it in what was still very much a man’s world when her career began. She did this with humour and grace, but her principles always told her when to deliver a well-deserved kicking.”
Funeral arrangements will be announced at a later date.