We gather in St Bride’s church today to honour the memory and celebrate the life of Peter Paterson, Fleet Street industrial and political reporter, who began his journalistic career on the Fulham Gazette, and who went on to work for the Telegraph, the New Statesman, the Spectator and the Daily Mail, as well as being a familiar voice on Radio 4.
We celebrate a journalist of the Old School, a shamelessly unreconstructed Fleet Street man, who mourned the end of the golden era of the street of adventure, but who rejoiced in the many friends he made, and the fun that he had.
As Peter says at the end of his autobiography:
“As a way of life, journalism was never going to make me rich, but in so many different ways, as H.L. Mencken wrote, and I have been lucky enough to discover for myself, a reporter’s life bestows on its practitioners ‘the life of kings’.”
Today we give thanks for Peter and rejoice in the privilege of having known him, and we commend him to God’s care and keeping, trusting that at the end of our brief day is the eternity of God’s love.
Amen.