Alastair Hetherington

Hector Alastair Hetherington (31 October 1919 – 3 October 1999) was a British journalist, newspaper editor and academic. For nearly twenty years he was the editor of "The Guardian."

Career

Hetherington was the son of Sir Hector Hetherington, professor of logic and philosophy at University College, Cardiff and later principal of the University of Glasgow. He was educated at Gresham's School in Holt, Norfolk, from 1933 to 1937 and then at Corpus Christi College, Oxford from 1938 to 1940, but his time at Oxford was interrupted by the Second World War, in which he served with the Royal Armoured Corps and the Northamptonshire Yeomanry. Shortly after the Normandy landings he was a tank captain advancing towards Vire when he survived his tank being blown up. He took part in the relief of Antwerp and ended his army career in 1945 by writing a "Military Geography of Schleswig-Holstein". By then he was Major Hetherington.

In 1945, he was appointed as editorial controller of Die Welt, the first German national newspaper to be produced in the British zone after the war, which was published in Hamburg,

Next he went to the Glasgow Herald and joined The Guardian from there in 1950. He was its foreign editor and defence correspondent from 1953 to 1956, then became editor of The Guardian in 1956, surviving in the post until 1975.

Hetherington's closest political contact as a national editor was Harold Wilson, but his closest political friend was Jo Grimond. For more than twenty years he wrote leading articles which sought to promote Liberal-Labour co-operation to defeat the Conservatives.

He was present at the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, attending preliminary meetings at the house of Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, with Sir Bernard Lovell and Bertrand Russell, but he did not join or support CND.

He gave evidence for the defence at the "Lady Chatterley" trial andbecame the first British editor to allow the word "fuck" to be used in his newspaper.

From 1975 to 1978 he was Controller of BBC Scotland, then manager of "BBC Highland" from 1979 to 1980. From 1982 until retirement he was research professor in Media Studies at Stirling University.

Family

He married Miranda Oliver in 1957, and they had two sons andtwo daughters, but were divorced in 1978. He then married Sheila Janet Cameron, in 1979.

After living most of his life in big cities, Hetherington retired to the Isle of Arran, in 1989.

Publications

* "Guardian Years" (London : Chatto & Windus , 1981) ISBN 0-7011-2552-7
* "News, Newspapers and Television" (Macmillan, London, 1985) ISBN 0–333–38605–1
* "Highlands and Islands: A Generation of Progress" (Aberdeen University Press, 1990) ISBN 0-08-037980-X

Honours

* Honorary Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1971
* Named "Journalist of the Year" in the National Press Awards, 1971.

Memorials

The Institute of Contemporary Scotland's Academy of Merit makes an annual "Alastair Hetherington Award for Humanitarian Service".

In 1999, Stirling University instituted an annual Hetherington Memorial Lecture in his memory.

External links

* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3908911,00.html Alastair Hetherington obituary at The Guardian]
* [http://www-fms.stir.ac.uk/research/hetherington/index.html The Hetherington Memorial Lecture]
* [http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=5623&inst_id=1 Papers, 1958-75] edited by Dr Thomas Nossiter
* [http://archives.lse.ac.uk/dserve.exe?dsqServer=lib-4.lse.ac.uk&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=Overview.tcl&dsqSearch=(RefNo='hetherington') Catalogue of the papers of journalist Hector Alastair Hetherington] at the Archives Division] of the London School of Economics