Bernard Shrimsley

Bernard Shrimsley (13 January 1931 – 9 June 2016) was a British journalist and newspaper editor.

Early life The son of John, a tailor’s pattern cutter, and his wife Alice, a homemaker, a Jewish couple who had migrated to the UK, Shrimsley (previously Shremski) was born in London. Educated at Kilburn Grammar School, along with his brother, Anthony, Shrimsley was evacuated to Northampton from London during the war, but had to go the police for a release as their guardians mistreated them.

Career Early career After leaving school, he became a messenger at the Press Association in London. After a year, he was taken on as a trainee at the Southport Guardian in 1948 where he remained, apart from his National Service in the Royal Air Force, until 1953. He then had spells at the Manchester offices of both the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express, plus a brief period in the Daily Mirrors London headquarters.

Editorial roles Shrimsley was appointed as the editor of the Liverpool Daily Post in 1968.

Remaining in that post until 1975, he then took over the equivalent job at The Suns Sunday sister title, the News of the World. During his time as editor of the News of the World, which was then still a broadsheet, its circulation declined by a million. Murdoch was urged by Shrimsley to re-launch the paper as a tabloid, a change which was not taken up by Murdoch at the time.

Shrimsley was taken on by Associated Newspapers in 1980 to launch The Mail on Sunday, but Lord Rothermere, the chairman of Associated, was not reached after ten issues and Shrimsley was dismissed. English succeeded him in July.

Shrimsley's former Murdoch colleague, (now Sir) Larry Lamb, was now editor of the Daily Express and chose Shrimsley as the title's assistant editor, a post he held from 1983 to 1986. After Lamb left the Express, Shrimsley served as its associate editor from 1986 to 1996.

Other roles Shimsley advised Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party during the 1997 general election and wrote editorials for the Press Gazette from 1999 until 2002. He continued to write articles for the publication subsequently. It contains "a thinly veiled portrait" of former Sun editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, combined with elements of the "self-publicising egoism" of Piers Morgan, then editor of the Mirror.

Shrimsley died on 9 June 2016, aged 85.