Alan Ruddock, 1960-2010

I suppose that relatively few people in England knew Alan Ruddock, who died from a heart attack on Sunday aged just 49, but in Scottish and Irish journalistic circles he was a considerable figure.

As Kevin Myers reminds us, he defied the IRA as editor of the Sunday Times’s Irish edition. Later, as Stewart Kirkpatrick remembers, he was a very fine editor of the Scotsman, presiding over the paper and its coverage of the first elections to the new Scottish parliament in 1999.

Later still, and foolishly, the Irish Times declined to give Alan the chance to edit the old lady of d’Olier St. Their loss. Instead he wrote a weekly column for the Sunday Independent in which, with more foresight than most commentators, he repeatedly warned that Ireland faced just the kind of fiscal crisis that has indeed overwhelmed it. His final column, published on Sunday, is a model (and persuasive) example of Alan’s cogent, sceptical style.