|
Biography
|
Since joining the Manchester Evening News JR-B has achieved little. Tom Henry frightened him out of politics altogether. Brian Redhead gave him a broad brief, without backup against such enemies as the vicious Bill Lloyd. Doug Emmett instructed him to become an active member of Friends of Manchester City Art Galleries, of which JR-B was honorary secretary for several years under the leadership of Timothy P P Clifford, still in a safe job in Edinburgh.
JR-B was also the founder and chairman and artistic director of Forum Music Society, the most successful chamber society in Britain, despite active, formidable, opposition. When JR-B arranged recitals by John Williams, Cleo Laine, Isaac Stern, the Amadeus String Quartet, Janet (sorry, she demands daming) Baker, Kyung-wha chung, Lucia Popp, there were thinly disguised threats, but JR-B doesn't kowtow to anyone. JR-B is also the author of Northern Accent, written for Ida Carroll, the history of the Northern School of Music.
Other personal details which may interest blackmailers and diligent compilers of address lists for upmarket mail-order catalogues: After 22 years of marriage, JR-B has been divorced since 1984 but is still on speaking terms with his ex-wife Kathleen and their son Mark, a paramedic with Greater Manchester Ambulance Service, and their daughter Rachel, a solicitor, who has retired to Surrey. Both children are married. JR-B is a grandfather. Hobbies, when computers aren't wasting countless hours, include playing the piano badly and privately, cooking, travel in Britain, and getting value from life membership of the National Trust. In addition to diabetes, JR-B, who survived a heart attack in 1998, enjoys other dysfunctions too many to be listed here.
This page last updated 10/11/01 |
Born
on May 21, 1936, John Robert-Blunn is one of Manchester's least illustrious
Edwardians. He was only 66th in the city's 11-plus examinations and
survived Burnage High School at the same time as Lord Foster, who
became famous and very rich by designing 'buildings for people' long
before Tony Blair became the 'people's president'. Foster has since
shaken hands with JR-B, 
but
quickly disappeared to avail himself of facilities in the men's powder
room or whatever. While unsuccessfully trying to wreck Manchester
Public Libraries, undecided whether to become the first Mancunian
prime minister since Lloyd George or the Archbishop of Canterbury,
JR-B began publishing The Monthly Review 'of politics, the arts and
current affairs', which annoyed the late womanizing city librarian,
David Colley. JR-B left with a certain amount of drama and joined
the Manchester City News, 
of which he became editor two years later, also writing about music,
especially Barbirolli, the Hallé
and the new Free Trade Hall (because he was the only staff member
who could play The Bluebells of Scotland on the piano). After a brief
spell as a sub at The Scotsman in Edinburgh and escaping national
service because of migraine, JR-B was appointed, by the great Tom
Henry, news sub and music critic (in that order) of the Manchester
Evening News, where he led a busy but uneventful life under the editorships
of Henry, Brian Redhead (nice guy, lousy editor), Doug Emmett (nice
guy, thick as 40 planks), and the unspeakable Michael Ronald
Unger (a nightmare best forgotten), until JR-B's voluntary retiral
in 1993, on a pensioner's pittance.