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Jim Brennan - gentleman observer with a love for his home town

Jim Brennan was presented with the Derby Civic Award for his contribution to the community through journalism at the annual meeting of Derby City Council on May 23 2001.

It was a fitting tribute to a man who is still actively covering the affairs of his home town almost 70 years after he first ventured into the world of newspapers by securing a few weeks work experience as a cub reporter at the Derby Evening Telegraph in 1939.

Like so many young men of his age, Jim's plans were interrupted when he joined the army later that year as war loomed. He was the first Derbeian soldier to become a parachutist while serving with No 2 Commando and the 1st Parachute Battalion.

On being de-mobbed in 1946, Jim secured a job on the national Sunday title, The People, before working on The Times, the Nottingham Evening Post and the Guardian before returning to Derby to earn his living as a freelance reporter. His immense local and historical national political knowledge illuminated the column he wrote for the Derby Evening Telegraph for several years in the 1990s and, when this was suddenly axed in 2000, Jim turned his hand to producing an independent record of the city's political affairs: the Derby Guardian.

Now in his 80s, Jim is still covering the city council in 2007.

He is a member emeritus of the Society of Editors, a Member of Honour of the National Union of Journalists and a member of the Association of British Science Writers.

• Jim Brennan
• Jim Brennan - gentleman observer with a love for his home town

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County:  Derbyshire

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