I first met Bruce Bedford when, as the founding editor of the British caving magazine Descent, he invited me, a fellow caver, to be the correspondent for the tiny caving area of Devon in 1986. Bruce, who has died aged 80, from sepsis following a fall, was a keen member of the Chelsea Speleological Society, which, confusingly, has its club HQ in south Wales. He wrote books on caving, but was known to a wider audience as a gifted playwright in the field of radio drama.
Bruce contributed several plays for both radio and the stage, including the BBC radio serial The Gibson. His first play, Night Business, written in the early 80s, won the BBC Radio Bristol playwriting competition, and Under a Stone Moon (1991), about a caver becoming trapped underground, was shortlisted for the John Whiting award for playwriting and nominated for the Prix Italia.
Born in Leeds, to Len, a commercial artist, and Patricia, Bruce went to Osmondthorpe county secondary school for boys, but hated it and left before taking any exams. Later, in the 1990s, he did some Open University modules.
By the time Bruce was 18, he was a reporter on the Tooting and Balham Gazette in London, and a member of the Chelsea Speleological Society. He then moved to the Kensington News before going hitchhiking around Australia. He also worked on the Liverpool Post (from their London office). He was assistant press officer for the British Farm Produce council and assistant air travel reporter for the Travel Trade Gazette, and later freelanced for the Observer, the Sunday Times and various other publications on adventure sports.
After a move to Exeter, he was chief feature writer for Devon Life, then subeditor of the Exeter Express and Echo, and news editor for Electronics Weekly. Around 1970, he moved to Wells in Somerset, where he remained for the rest of his life.
In his early days in Devon, Bruce became assistant editor at the Speleologist magazine. After he left in 1968, he went on to set up Descent, where he remained editor for 20 years. His tenure was notorious for the irregular intervals at which the magazine appeared, once lampooned by Chris Howes, who took over from Bruce as editor, in a humorous photograph of a cobwebbed, skeletal caver reaching up to a letterbox as a copy of the magazine came through.
Bruce was also involved with Rocksport, a specialist shop for cavers in Wells, which was open for a few years from the late 70s.
A marriage to Jenny Ball produced four children, Rob, Joanne, Kate and Amy. The marriage ended in divorce, and Bruce went on to have a son, Sam, from another relationship. Bruce suffered ill health in recent years, including a renal transplant, but received great support from his partner, Lesley Hide.
Lesley and his five children survive him, as does his sister, Lesley.
