Desmond Christy obituary

My friend and former colleague Desmond Christy, who has died aged 71, was a journalist and intellectual with a particular interest in German language and culture. His favourites were Mahler, Schütz, Cranach, Friedrich, Goethe’s Faust. To the end he was translating Kant, for pleasure.

Des joined the Guardian in 1980 as a subeditor on the arts and books desks, later working on Guardian Europe. He also did a fair bit of writing, including theatre reviews and a diary for Guardian Europe. His tastes were highbrow, but he unbent when standing in for Nancy Banks-Smith as a TV critic, having fun with The X-Files.

When introducing himself to colleagues, he would say, “Des, not Christie, but Christ. Why?” That was him – questioning and a bit subversive.

His parents were Irish and met on the boat coming over from Cork to Cardiff, where Des, the second of five children, was born. His father, Robert Christy, was a quantity surveyor and a Methodist, his mother Eileen (nee O’Leary), a Catholic.

After several moves, the family settled in Leicester, where Des went first to Corpus Christi RC secondary modern before transferring to Leicester boys’ grammar school. He failed his A-levels, but did well in the S-levels – the more imaginative “scholarship” exams aimed at the highest performing students. Very Des.

He began his working life straight from school, in 1971, at WH Smith, destined for management training. But, hating being expected to catch a shoplifter, he left after six months, becoming a cub reporter on the Northampton Chronicle and Echo. There he met his good friend Ian Mayes, who subsequently became the first readers’ editor of the Guardian. Both were union men, but in the great local papers strike of 1978-79, the two of them sitting in a car, supposedly on the picket line, nodded off as a lorry loaded with newsprint slunk through.

After a spell on the Birmingham Post, Des joined the Guardian, his real home, and where he met his partner of several years, Isobel Montgomery, then working as a translator, and mother of their daughter, Bea.

One brilliant piece he wrote for the paper in the late 1980s described life with his new best friend, the dialysis machine. Ill-health dogged the last 30 years and more of his life, beginning with renal failure, two kidney transplants and, most devastatingly, around 2000, a stroke.

Afterwards, in his hospital bed, surrounded by friends, when the library trolley came round he chose a biography of Wittgenstein. He couldn’t speak but he was telling everybody, “I’m still here, it’s still me.” Wholly stoical and uncomplaining, he was a remarkable survivor – friends described him as “a stubborn bastard”, as well as “the kindest man I knew”.

Unable to work from this time, Des remained active, going for walks and cycling as long as he was able, and studying and translating German texts in Oxford libraries. He also spent time in Brighton, sharing care of Bea with Isobel, with whom he remained on good terms, and going to the theatre with his beloved daughter. “He was a brilliant father,” said Bea.

She survives him, as do his siblings, Sheila, Joseph, Geraldine and Anthony.