HARRY COEN:THE DUBLIN-born journalist Harry Coen, a smoking, drinking Fleet Street legend who "didn't do mornings" but was indispensable as a brilliant copy editor when he did arrive, has died in France at the age of 67. He had retired with his partner David Thornton to his beloved Burgundy region nearly seven years ago.
Although an atheist, he was acting editor of the Catholic Heraldin the mid-1990s – "a particularly interesting appointment for an atheist queen", as he put it himself.
One of the most repeated anecdotes about him, included in his Daily Telegraphobituary and picked up fondly on blogs in recent days, recalled the long gone days of the "stone" when subeditors worked with printers to make final changes to pages. He was cutting a story as the deadline approached. "Come on, Harry," a compositor yelled. "Get on with it." Coen responded: "I may be a fairy, but I haven't got a ------- wand."
Born in Dublin, his family moved to England when he was a child. He became a reporter on the Northern Echoin Saltburn, north Yorkshire, where he met David Thornton, who was to be his lifelong partner.
He soon graduated to the national press and worked for several newspapers, including Today,the Sunday Timesand the Telegraph group before, in 1998, becoming number three on the Sunday Expressunder the editorship of Amanda Platell.
The following year, he was invited back to the Telegraph group to do a “little light editing” of sponsored supplements. His fine writing, full of grand descriptions, delicately teetered on the right side of the divide between pleasing clients and having fun.
He was possessed of a magnificently generous spirit but was not known for his athleticism. Even as an able-bodied 55-year-old, he opted to use the lift for the disabled rather than the stairs on his way to one of his favoured bars at Canary Wharf.
Timekeeping and the demands of an alien nine-to-five existence finally got the better of him. One day he turned up late at the office complaining that he’d been caught in the school run. It was 5pm.
“I don’t do mornings,” he explained.
In 2005, he went to live in France where he and David bought and rebuilt an old village forge in Burgundy, converting it to a beautiful home with considerable style.
He was in the midst of the Burgundy wines he had loved for years and he planted some vines himself at his new home.
He continued to work in a peripatetic fashion from Burgundy for the Telegraph group.
He also organised village music fetes and became a central part of the community, giving as freely of his time and energy as he did in so many areas of his life.
David Thornton survives him.
Harry Peter Raymond Coen: born January 23rd, 1945; died January 23rd, 2012