Obituary: Ted Reynolds

By ARNOLD PICKMERE

Journalist, author. Died aged 72.

Edward Harrison Reynolds was the sort of writer who could begin a column with "Once in the Celebes Sea, when I was a cabin boy on a Danish oil tanker".

The essay turned out to be about, eventually, roosters crowing near his vineyard in Marlborough. It all made sense.

Reynolds, who died of a stroke in Wellington, was a subeditor, news editor, features editor, books editor and specialist writer with the Herald. He also edited Wilson and Horton's Thursday magazine for a time.

After he "retired" to develop a vineyard at the top of the South Island he continued to write weekly columns, From Another Island, for many years.

Bald recitations of the senior positions he held on newspapers and magazines do him little justice. Reynolds did not have a journalistic niche.

He could and did write on almost every subject in New Zealand society and many overseas, particularly the time he spent with Tibetan refugees 3km up in the Himalayas.

He wrote, when he was not inclined to whimsy, with a style and clarity which allowed him to slice through the most complex of subjects. And they included topics not universally popular some 20 years ago - from Maori land claims and injustices to insider trading in the stockmarket before the 1980s crash.

Colleagues characterised him this week as highly intelligent and an excellent journalist, if somewhat eccentric.

Although he wrote some excellent and sometimes witty Herald editorials he did not much enjoy the editorial meetings at which the subjects and viewpoints were selected.

"I'm just going to be told What to Think," he complained before one such afternoon conference.

An entertaining man with a sly, laid-back sense of humour he had, in his years as Herald news editor, a habit of waiting for the new cadet reporter to drop a painfully crafted, usually too long, story in his news basket.

He would pick it up without glancing up, test its weight carefully on the palm of his hand - and throw it sideways into his rubbish bin, watching impassively to see how the new arrival handled such treatment.

As a subeditor of 30 years or so he recalled new words and usage entering the language, to the horror of grizzled older journalists who would stand over white-faced reporters while they changed such banned expressions as "contact" back to "get in touch with".

Usually affable, Reynolds could on occasion be abrupt.

He once wrote a reference which read simply "[name] is a lazy reporter. E.H. Reynolds."

After remonstrations he agreed to pen one less negative. It said "[name] is not a lazy reporter. E.H. Reynolds."

Reynolds originally came from Nelson, and the top of the South Island drew him back when he retired at 60 and established his Laughing Owl vineyard.

This enterprise, the earth house he had built and the country life were the source of many columns, although the house cost him more than he expected and the adjoining river encroachments caused him anxiety and angst.

His interests were wide - cooking, winemaking and organics (the stable manure in the boot of a Herald car).

He restored a colonial house in St Marys Bay in Auckland (using galvanised nails throughout) before he went south and also built his daughters a bach on Rakino Island.

Ted Reynolds wrote two books, My Side of the River and Palaces in the Sky: A Year Among the Tibetans, and is survived by daughters Helen and Penny and three grandchildren.