Peter Crookston
Medicine, The Family and The Urban Man’s Survival Guide. He also wrote features, notably finding and profiling John Betjeman’s poetic heroine Joan Hunter Dunn.
After two years as deputy editor of The Sunday Times Magazine, Crookston was appointed editor of Nova in 1969 and recruited graphic designer David Hillman from The Sunday Times to join him there as art director. Writers, artists and photographers with international reputations – Mary McCarthy, John Mortimer, Norman Lewis, Diane Arbus, Peter Blake, Jean-Paul Goude, David Montgomery, Tony Evans – were commissioned to work for the magazine.
In 1973 Crookston moved to The Observer as features editor and in 1977 was appointed editor of its magazine. Repeating the success of the single-subject magazine formula, he produced circulation-raising issues on Village London, Village England, Island Britain and The Ages of Britain, all of which became successful books. In 1982, after five years as editor, he left The Observer Magazine to work as a magazine consultant and freelance writer. He became editor of English-language editions of the German magazine GEO and was later editor of the BBC’s World magazine. As a writer Peter Crookston has frequently contributed to The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, and The Sunday Times.
He is married to the artist Zoe Zenghelis and lives in West London.
Peter Crookston is a journalist and author. In 2018 he published his most recent book Voices from the Hill, the story of a Highland laird who would take no part in the notorious Clearances of the 19th century.
He began his journalistic career on his native Tyneside, as a reporter, and later sub-editor, on newspapers in Newcastle upon Tyne, after which he moved to the Photonews writing team on the Daily Express. His work as a magazine journalist began in 1964 when he joined the Sunday Times Magazine and under the inspiring editorships of Mark Boxer and Godfrey Smith he produced issues devoted to subjects such as The Great Train Robbery, Frontiers of
Research for The Pitmen’s Requiem (see books page): Crookston (right), with ex-miner novelist Sid Chaplin, an Ashington miner and photographer Arthur Steel.
Voices from the Hill, March 2018
Nova, September 1970
The Pitmen's Requiem, 2010
Observer Magazine, July 1979
GEO, September 1989
© Peter Crookston - Enquiries to info@petercrookston.com
Cycling up the Col d'Aubisque, one of the Tour de France climbs in the Pyrenees,
for an 'Action Holidays' issue of The Observer Magazine in 1981.
