Jonathan Sale, who has died aged 81, built a quietly distinguished career as a journalist whose pieces combined curiosity, gentleness and a wry humour. According to the obituary published in The Guardian, he became known for short, affectionate portraits of the everyday and the eccentric — subjects that ranged from nostalgic curiosities to intimate obituaries — and for a voice that balanced lightness with real feeling.

He learned his trade on Fleet Street, moving from early magazine work at Queen to a long stint at Punch, where he rose to features editor and, incongruously for a lifelong teetotaller, briefly wrote the wine column. When Punch was taken over in 1986 he was made redundant; the severance package included an Apple Mac, which the obituary says he treasured as he set himself up as a freelance writer — a role he maintained for the rest of his life.

As a freelancer he contributed widely to national titles, writing for The Independent, The Times, The Guardian (for which he produced many obituaries), the New European and the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. His regular Independent column, Passed/Failed, interviewed public figures about their schooldays and was collected in 2014 as Telling Tales Out of School, a volume that brought together recollections from contributors including Clare Balding, Jeremy Paxman and Michael Palin, and which is listed by its publisher and major booksellers.

Sale’s roots were Cambridge: he was born and brought up there, the son of Ellen (née Webster) and Arthur Sale, a long-serving English don at Magdalene College. He attended The Leys and read English at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he preferred writing for the student paper Varsity to his formal studies — a youthful focus that presaged a lifetime in print. The Guardian obituary, and an earlier notice for his father, confirm the academic family background that shaped his early years.

A committed local activist and Labour supporter, Sale famously broke his decades-long sobriety once — to raise a glass when Labour won in 1997 — and later chaired the Peckham Rye ward. Colleagues and local campaigners praised his ability to steer fraught meetings towards calm and generosity; as the obituary notes, some said his meetings felt “like discussions around a campfire”. He campaigned to save Honor Oak Park Rec and served on the Friends of One Tree Hill committee, working to protect and enhance that small patch of south London woodland.

Outside journalism, two passions defined him: his bicycle and his music. The Guardian piece records that his main mode of transport was always his bike — so reliable that local deliveries were sometimes left to “the man on the bike” — and that he loved jazz and blues, content at home with Miles Davis or Muddy Waters playing while he wrote. His Guardian contributor profile and range of features illustrate the light, observant prose with which he treated family life, parenting and the small eccentricities of daily life.

His personal life was marked by long partnerships and careful devotion. He met Ruth Bateman in 1968 and married her in 1970; he cared for her after she became ill in 1985 with what was later identified as a slow-growing brain tumour, and she died in 2005. In 2007 he met Diana Aubrey; his earlier personal essay in The Guardian described the affectionate, sometimes unconventional domestic arrangements they shared. He is survived by Diana, his children Rebecca, Jessica and the author of the obituary, and grandchildren Jack, Heather, Solly and Reuben.

Sale’s work will be remembered for its humane intelligence and gentle mockery — the ability to treat an impending baldness or an eccentric bicycle with the same mixture of wit and sympathy he brought to people’s lives. According to the obituary in The Guardian, that tone made him a distinctive presence on the pages of Britain’s newspapers for decades, and a figure whose civic energy and warmth were felt just as much in local meetings and campaigns as in print.

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Source: Noah Wire Services