The funeral took place last Tuesday, March 4 near the southern England home of one of the giants of British science journalism, Tim Radford. A New Zealander, he spent much of his career at The Guardian before moving in retirement to become a pioneer of the Climate News Network, now a partner of The Energy Mix.
It’s easy to list Tim’s many attributes. Reading anything he’d written was a joy. Trying to get your head round the most abstruse Radford science story suddenly seemed simple. (This was the reporter, remember, who defined journalism for an interviewer: “You just ask questions. If you can’t ask an intelligent question, ask a stupid one. You still get a good answer.”)
Tim could turn his hand to pretty well whatever the news desk wanted, acting as letters editor before a stint on the arts desk, followed by a move to deputy features chief and then three years as literary editor. Then came the move to science editor.
On appointment, Tim knew relatively little about science. That soon changed, because he taught himself what he needed to know. Not just to withstand expert criticism but, just as important, to interest and enthuse readers, who’d finish reading, put the paper down, realize they’d learnt something quite painlessly, and feel better for the rest of the day.
Nor was that all. A former colleague wrote: “I thought he was the cleverest, kindest, most decent journalist I have ever met. A total polymath, who made light of all his skills. And he seemed to know so much about everything. He could write beautifully, and could make the most obscure subjects seem interesting.”
Radford wore his brilliance lightly—too lightly, many friends would say. He once told me he suffered from impostor syndrome (the suspicion that he wasn’t half as good as he was made out to be). You could legitimately argue that he was a victim of its reverse, someone who if he had been let loose to write about politics, perhaps, or economics, or one of the other fashionably sexy journalistic preoccupations, would have left a different and perhaps better-known mark.
But he wasn’t. And that was a gain for science, and for humanity.
If he was a paragon not only of journalism but of humanity too, though, he did not hide a lighter side. He had a lively time in Central Asia and thereabouts. An escort on a press trip to the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, recalls Tim gaining admission on the strength of an out-of-date health certificate which he then shared—successfully—with other participants. Another time, heading for Samarkand in Uzbekistan, his flight ended up in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, its passengers given beds still warmed by their evicted Soviet occupants. Tim settled his fellow passengers by reading The Travels of Marco Polo to them.
Shortly before he died, he wrote to a former colleague: “I like to think I’m still more mesmerized by the unbelievable state of things in Washington than by, for instance, my own mortality. So I’m still a newsman.” And he was—and one of its best practitioners.
Tim cared with great devotion for his wife Maureen, who died last year. Both are survived by their children William and Stella, a granddaughter and great granddaughter, and a brother and sister in New Zealand.
Timothy Robin Radford, journalist, born 9 October 1940, died 10 February 2025. Radford and Alex Kirby were two of the four founders of the Climate News Network.
