My friend Peter Silverton, who has died aged 70 of brain cancer, was a journalist and author. An early admirer and supporter of the punk scene while a writer on Sounds magazine in the 1970s, Peter graduated from the music press to national newspapers, including the Guardian. Later he became an author and an early years education strategist, helping to develop his family’s nursery school business, Ready Steady Go.
Peter was born in Leatherhead, Surrey, and was adopted as a baby by Alf Silverton, a Fleet Street layout artist turned pub landlord, and his wife, Mary, a school dinner lady. He and his adopted sister, Debbie, spent the first part of their childhood in Hemel Hempstead, before moving to live above the pub in Wadhurst, East Sussex. In the sixth form at Skinners’ school, Tunbridge Wells, Peter made friends with John Mellor, and later wrote about his friend’s band, the 101-ers, for the American magazine Trouser Press, just as John – by then known as Joe Strummer – split to form the Clash.
