Obituary: ES Turner (original) (raw)

Ernest Turner, who has died at the age of 96, was the doyen of freelance journalists, contributing to the humorous weekly Punch for more than 50 years. He entered journalism in 1926, had his first piece published in the Dundee Courier in 1927 - and saw his final articles in the TLS and the Oldie earlier this year.

Of the 20 books he produced, the first, Boys Will Be Boys (1948), was a classic of its kind. All were written with what the New Yorker called "instructive levity [and] tart elegance of phrase". Roads to Ruin: A Shocking History of Social Progress (1950) was quoted in the Commons by an MP far from Ernest's end of the political spectrum - Tony Benn.

ES Turner - writers of his generation often used their initials - went to several schools, including Orme boys' in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Although he had the reserved, courteous and erudite air of an Oxbridge don, he never went to university, but began his journalistic career at the age of 17, when his father bought him an ancient typewriter for a fiver from a passing lorry.

Despite being the patron saint of freelancing, he did have several day jobs, initially on the Glasgow Evening Times, where he worked his way up from copy boy to subeditor, reporter and gossip column editor. A perk of the job was a trip on the maiden voyage of Queen Mary to New York, which inspired one of two novels written under the name of Rupert Lang; his last piece for the London Review of Books was a review of a volume on liners. He then worked for the Glasgow Evening Citizen before moving to the Scottish Daily Express.

In 1937 Ernest married Helen Martin, a New Yorker, and they had two daughters. He had already started moonlighting for Punch; fortunately, the war failed to stop the flow of articles or payments - in guineas - to Gunner Turner.

He joined the Royal Artillery in 1941 and his anti-aircraft battery shot down a German bomber - although, he added punctiliously, he was on leave at the time. In a more profitable use of his abilities, he was"winkled out of his battery" just before the end of the war to help with the launch of Soldier, the British army magazine. In 1946 he was promoted to major - and to editor, a job he held until 1957 as a civilian.

By then, he was adding books to his endeavours; for Boys Will Be Boys, he ploughed through back numbers of the old blood-and-thunder adventure magazines specialising in cliffhanger serials; the young hero would be left hanging over a cliff in a totally impossible situation, which would be easily resolved in the next issue: "With one bound Jack was free."

Social history had never been as much fun or, with three extra printings in its first week - such was the demand - as profitable. None of his subsequent books repeated this runaway success. Yet Roads to Ruin: the Shocking History of Social Reform still entertains and appals. It chronicles the disgraceful rearguard action of the upper classes against the introduction of the Plimsoll line, the abolition of child chimney sweeps and the repeal of laws under which convicted criminals could be hung, drawn and quartered.

Tony Benn quoted from it during a Commons debate on foxhunting. Yet when I once asked Ernest how such a liberal classic could be written by someone with his rightwing persona (which was only partly a pose), he growled that he would like to rewrite the book - from the opposite view.

Ernest then became a permanent freelance, mostly for Punch, where he saw seven editors come and go. With immaculate typing on special flimsy paper, he tapped out light verse and spoofs. His special skill lay in the production of fascinating pieces on forgotten subjects, such as the system of transmitting West End plays - live - from microphones on stage into the public's home telephones.

Other books covered advertising, doctors, servants, dukes and the "wayward parsons of Grub Street". And courtship. Following Helen's death in 1968, he met Roberta Hewitt, a Belfast-born housing manager, in Samarkand while writing a travel piece for the Sunday Telegraph, and they married in 1971. He leaves a final article, to be published in the September issue of - naturally - the Oldie. He is survived by his wife, and his daughters, Patricia and Jill.

· Ernest Sackville Turner, journalist and author, born November 17 1909; died July 6 2006