Nicholas Tomalin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is uncategorized.
Please help improve this article by adding it to one or more categories, so it may be associated with related articles (how?). Please remove this tag after categorizing. |
Nicholas Osborne Tomalin (October 1931 - October 19, 1973) was a British journalist and writer.
Tomalin was the son of communist poet Miles Tomalin, who was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. He studied English Literature at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and became President of the Cambridge Union while there. He graduated in 1954 and began work as a foreign correspondant for various London based newspapers. He married fellow Cambridge graduate Claire Tomalin, with whom he had several children. He became increasingly successful and soon co-wrote a book (with Ron Hall) about amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst's failed attempt to circumnavigate the world and subsequent suicide. His article The General Goes Zapping Charlie Cong was included in Tom Wolfe's collection The New Journalism, which was a collection of non-fiction pieces emblematic of a new movement within the field aimed at revolutionising reportage.
Tomalin's famous qoutation on the qualities necessary for success in journalism is repeated in various forms. The most common is; "The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability".
Tomalin was killed aged forty-one in October 1973 in the Golan Heights while covering the clash between the Israeli and Syrian armed forces during the Yom Kippur War.
In November 2005 the website Press Gazette named its top fifty 'journalists of the modern era'. It placed Nicholas Tomalin thirty-fifth.
