Richard Garner

• FORMER Camden Journal reporter Richard Garner, whose death you marked with a fine obituary, was a journalist from the profession’s golden age – but reserved and thoughtful, he was about as far from the caricature of the Fleet Street hustler as you could get, (Richard Garner, passionate newspaper man with insight and understanding, February 7).

Having also learned the tricks of the trade at the Camden New Journal many decades later, I met Richard when I began covering education stories for the Morning Star in 2015.

Among the education correspondents of the British press, Richard, the Independent’s education editor and who had covered the beat for 30 years, was the leader of the pack.

That meant not only booking the restaurants for correspondents’ dinners at union conferences, and being among the last to call it a night in the hotel bars, but mentoring young upstarts like me.

He was always generous with his expertise on the “education world” as he called it, and its history – and answered probably tiresome questions on the implications of statistical shifts and policy changes with the utmost patience.

His last job for the Independent was an NUT conference in Brighton, where I recall his thrill as we toasted his final front page, when it appeared on a late-night BBC newspaper review, with whiskies in the Metropole hotel.

It was from Richard that I first heard of Dominic Cummings, with whom he had had a legendary run-in well before Cummings was a household name.

When Cummings was a largely unknown adviser to Education Secretary Michael Gove, he sent Richard a 3am email complaining about a story in the Independent. Cummings advised Garner to consult a colleague, the Financial Times’s Chris Cook, on seeking a “good therapist”.

Gove subsequently visited the Independent’s offices to demand – in vain – that Garner be sacked.

In retirement, at the Euston Tap in the old station gatehouses, the Hoop and Grapes in Farringdon, the India Club on the Strand or Gaby’s Deli on Charing Cross Road, he was inquisitive, thoughtful and entertaining as ever.

I’m sad to have lost a great friend, that the press has lost a great journalist, and the world has lost a great chap.

CONRAD LANDIN
Cartside Street, Glasgow