Douglas Gageby, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetDouglas Gageby
Irish newspaper editor
Date of Birth: 29-Sep-1918
Date of Death: 24-Jun-2004
Profession: newspaper editor
Zodiac Sign: Libra 
About Douglas Gageby
- (Robert John) Douglas Gageby (29 September 1918 – 24 June 2004) was one of the pre-eminent Irish newspaper editors of his generation.
- His life is well documented and a book of essays about him, written by many of his colleagues, some of whom had attained fame for their literary achievements, was published in 2006 [Bright Brilliant Days: Douglas Gageby and the Irish Times, ed.
- Andrew Whittaker, Dublin, A&A Farmar, 2006]. Gageby was born in Dublin, at 54 Upper Beechwood Avenue, Ranelagh, to Thomas Gageby, a Belfast-born civil servant.
- His mother, Ethel Elizabeth née Smith, was a schoolteacher from county of Cavan.
- The Gageby family moved to Belfast when Douglas was about three as his father went to work for the Northern Ireland Civil Service following partition.
- His paternal grandfather Robert Gageby had stood as a Labour parliamentary candidate in Belfast North in 1910, and was a Belfast City Councillor for 20 years, first elected in 1898 as a trade union candidate supported by the Independent Labour Party. He was educated at Belfast Royal Academy and Trinity College Dublin, where he was elected a scholar in Modern Languages (French and German) in 1940.
- He was also actively involved with the student newspaper Trinity News.
- He enlisted in the Irish Army as a private soldier at the outbreak of World War II.
- He was commissioned later, and he served as an intelligence officer.
- He reported from post-war Germany for The Irish Press and went on to work under Conor Cruise O'Brien in the Irish News Agency.
- In 1954 he was the first editor of the Evening Press.
- In 1963 he became editor of The Irish Times, a post he held until 1986, having been brought back from a short retirement in 1974.
- He is credited with moving the Irish Times from a Unionist organ into a successful Irish journal of record.
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