Memoirs of our Newbury news man

Gerald Hunt recalls his 50 years of reporting in new book

FOR 50 years, the tall figure of Gerald Hunt has been well-known in the district as, together with camera, he recorded the doings of the people of Newbury and the surrounding area.

Having worked with six Newbury Weekly News editors, it is understandable that he ‘feels like Methuselah' and speaks of having a lie down.

However, the call of the quill pen/typewriter/computer was irresistible and instead of having that well-earned zizz, he sat down and wrote a 374-page book, with the promise of a second to come since he could not fit in all he wanted to cover in the first one.

The result is an extraordinarily detailed catalogue of the changes which have taken place both in the people and the place in that half-century, chronicled by a local lad who remembers walking the three miles to Beenham School “across fields of buttercups, daisies and ruminative cows”. Read the review in Thursday's N2.