Loss to journalism
Derek Marks of the Daily Express, who died peacefully last weekend, was one of the verY greatest of British political journalists. Again and again he excelled his rivals in the number of scoops, and in the authority and pungency of his writing: he was probably the greatest lobbY correspondent, and the most incisive and knowledgeable writer about domestic politics, that Fleet Street has ever seen. He has not, of course, for some time, been properly a political correspondent, and his later pieces including those he wrote at the very end of his life, during the Tory leadership struggle — were neither as well-informed nor as balanced as those that flowed from his typewriter in his great days. But he has for a long time been struggling with 3 debilitating illness and the most remarkable thing about him is that he managed to continue writing virtually until the moment of his death, rather than that the quality of some of the things he did showed some decline. For dedication, professionalism, and the combative zest of Beaverbrookian journalism at its verY best there has been nobody in the newspaper business in recent years to equal Marks; and his loss will be deeply felt, not only by his oWn, contemporaries and friends, but by manY journalists who scarcely knew him.
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