Mr George Henry Burrows, who died on Monday aged 88, was a former journalist with The Irish Times, a former editor of Times Pictorial and one of the best-known nature commentators of his era. Born in Newbliss, Co Monaghan, in 1908, and educated at the Drogheda Church of Ireland Parish School, he came to The Irish Times in the late 1920s from provincial journalism in Co Louth. He served as both chief reporter and sub-editor in The Irish Times before his appointment in 1941 as the first editor of the pictorial weekly newspaper Times Pictorial, an idea he had developed with his fellow sub-editor Mr Eddie McSweeney, later to become better known as the broadcaster Maxwell Sweeney.
Mr Burrows returned to sub-editing, his area of particular expertise, after his period as editor of the Pictorial. A fine sub-editor, he had a keen nose for potential libels and was regularly entrusted with the most sensitive stories. He also served as Irish correspondent for Telegraph newspapers in Britain, the Manchester Guardian and the Daily Herald in London, before he retired from The Irish Times in the 1970s.
Mr Burrows was a keen skier in his youth and held the gold badge awarded to expert skiers by the Swiss authorities. He later turned his attention to angling and wrote the "Angling Notes" column for The Irish Times. He served on the committee of the Dublin Trout Anglers' Association and several kindred organisation, was president of the Strollers, and was a long-serving member of the council of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland.
Mr Burrows became a significant authority on the flora and fauna of the Broad Meadow estuary in north Dublin and was a regular contributor to Topical Talks, a series of short daily talks broadcast each afternoon on Radio Eireann, as well as the writer of a series of occasional nature columns for The Irish Times.
Mr Burrows leaves his wife Daisy and children Richard, John, Rose and Jane. A celebration of Mr Burrows's life will be held in St Andrew's Church, Malahide, at 3 p.m. this Friday, which would have been Mr Burrows's 89th birthday. The burial will take place in the adjoining churchyard.