My father, Mike Morrissey, who has died aged 96, received an unusual – yet ultimately prescient – piece of career advice. His English essays at school were routinely dismissed with a sniffy comment from his teacher: “journalese”. Years of hearing this supposed criticism left him in no doubt. A journalist he would be – and what a journalist he became.
Born in Bradford, he was the eldest of four children of Jim, a paediatrician, and Winnifred. His father was killed at Dunkirk when Michael was 10 and he grew up with his mother and younger brothers, John and Paul, and sister, Jillian. He went to Downside, a Catholic school near Bath, on a “war-widow’s” scholarship.
