Maureen O’Connor and I joined the Guardian together in Manchester in 1962 as graduate trainees. As yet unmarried, she was known as Maureen Jones, though all our pieces were bylined as “By our own reporter”. She was a cheery member of a newsroom where other reporters included Peter Eckersley, later head of drama at Granada, and Arthur Hopcraft, who was to adapt Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for TV. Maureen and I were mentored by Harry Whewell, the quirky news editor, and had to survive tutoring memorably dismissed by Stanley Reynolds, an American, as nothing more than “readin’ and writin’”.
