Hugh McIlvanney obituary

Pre-eminent sports journalist who strove for perfection

Hugh McIlvanney’s life as a sports journalist resembled one of his perfectly crafted sentences: long, lyrical and rich with surprises. He was a scrupulous and perceptive witness to what he regarded with reverence as the “magnificent triviality” of sport, and his death, at the age of 84, will be the more keenly felt in a climate of concern about the dwindling integrity of the printed word. He leaves behind a fading image of an era that was more forgiving of boisterous behaviour than the one from which he retired in 2016 after nearly 60 years of excellence.

There might be dissenting, scattered voices, but the consensus among his peers was that McIlvanney was the best sportswriter of his era. It is hard to find argument with that conclusion. His friend and rival, Ian Wooldridge, pushed him close – and was probably more willing to cede first place to him than McIlvanney was the other way around – while near contemporaries such as Dudley Doust and James Lawton kept him honest. Now they are all gone, Lawton only last September.

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