Background
Tomalin was the son of Miles Tomalin, a Communist poet and veteran of the Spanish Civil War.
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Nicholas Tomalin
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He studied English literature at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He graduated in 1954 and began work as a foreign correspondent for various London newspapers.
Career
As a student he was President of the Cambridge Union and editor of the prestigious undergraduate Granta magazine. In spite of numerous affairs on his part (and hers), they remained together until his death. He later co-wrote a book with Ron Hall about amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst"s failed attempt to circumnavigate the world and subsequent suicide.
His article The General Goes Zapping Charlie Congress was included in Tom Wolfe"s collection The New Journalism, which was a collection of non-fiction pieces emblematic of a new movement of reporting aimed at revolutionising the field
Tomalin"s articles often began with bombastic statements on their subject matter. The most famous of these is: "The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability".
Tomalin was killed in Israel by a Syrian wire missile on 17 October 1973 while reporting on the Yom Kippur War. In November 2005 the journalism trade publication Press Gazette named Tomalin among its top forty "journalists of the modern era".
