Frank Johnson (journalist)

For other people with the same name, see Frank Johnson (disambiguation).

Frank Johnson
Born	Frank Robert Johnson 20 January 1943
Died	15 December 2006
Notable credit(s)	The Spectator The Daily Telegraph
Spouse	Virginia Fraser

Frank Robert Johnson (20 January 1943 – 15 December 2006) was an English journalist.

Education

Johnson failed his 11-plus examination, and was educated at a state secondary school in Shoreditch in East London, which he left at the age of 16. Unlike many senior journalists of his time, he did not have a background in further or higher education, and instead, had taken a job as a 'messenger' on a national newspaper.

Career

He was a junior reporter at the North-West Evening Mail in Barrow-in-Furness from 1965 to 1966. One of the duties of news staff was to cover sport, which was an unwelcome intrusion into the weekend. Johnson once reported the score of a Barrow rugby league match inaccurately and was robustly criticised by his editor on the Monday morning. However, he never had to cover sport again.

He was the editor of the conservative Spectator magazine from 1995 to 1999 and was a popular columnist for The Daily Telegraph. He had a particular reputation for his work as a parliamentary sketch writer, as which he was regarded by many as one of the most incisive and amusing commentators of his generation.

Personal life

He married Virginia Fraser, the widow of Simon Fraser, Master of Lovat, in 1998 who survives him. He died after a seven-year fight against cancer.