A BOOK has been published to celebrate the life of the journalist and author David Foot, who spent many years living with his family in Westbury-on-Trym.
The book spans the range of David’s work from football and cricket reports to theatre reviews as well as stories about local history and murders that he covered as a reporter. David also wrote more than 20 books, primarily about cricket. His books included biographies of cricketers Harold Gimblett and Wally Hammond.
David was born in the Somerset village of East Coker in 1929, living as a child in a cottage without electricity or running water.
He began his journalistic career as a 16-year-old school-leaver on the Western Gazette in Yeovil – not far from his home – before moving to the Bristol Evening World in 1955. When he was covering a football match one Saturday in the early 1960s, the Evening World, which was in a circulation battle with its rival, the Bristol Evening Post, closed with immediate effect. It was then that David decided to become a freelance journalist. For many years he covered regional drama productions for The Guardian as well as football and cricket for the paper. He wrote the first review of the first production of a play by Harold Pinter.
David Foot also had close ties for years with Television Wales and West (TWW) – forerunner of HTV – and the BBC in Bristol. For thirty years he wrote a weekly sports column for the Western Daily Press.
This book called Footprints: David Foot’s lifetime of writing has been written and edited by Stephen Chalke, a cricket writer and publisher of David’s last four books.
He said: “I am grateful to David’s son Mark for encouraging me to write the book then undertaking the demanding task of sorting through his father’s work.”
David died in May 2021 at the age of 92.
The book can be obtained through all the usual retail outlets, priced at £22 or direct from Stephen Chalke for £15 at 125 Garnet Street, Bristol BS3 3JH. 01174 523760