Collin Brooks

British journalist, writer, and broadcaster

Collin Brooks (22 December 1893 – 1959), frequently known as "CB", was a British journalist, writer, and broadcaster. In 1913 he founded the Manchester Press Agency. In 1915 he joined the British Army, where he was awarded the Military Cross as a 2nd Lieutenant. After the war, he worked for many newspapers from 1921 until 1953, becoming chairman and editor of Truth for 12 years. His later career moved from journalism to broadcasting, and he participated in Any Questions and The Brains Trust for BBC Radio.

Born William Collin Brooks he was the son of William Edward Brooks (1864–1914) and Isabella (née Thomas), herself the daughter of Griffith Thomas and Isabella (née Harrison – a descendant of Colonel Thomas Harrison of Cromwell's New Model Army). He was born and brought up in the north of England, spent only seven years in formal education, and after a short period as a trainee accountant became a commercial traveller for various companies, from the age of fifteen to twenty. In 1913 he founded the Manchester Press Agency. Brooks' father died only weeks before the outbreak of World War I, and his mother Isabella died eighteen months later, on Christmas Eve 1915. Two weeks later their son married Lillian Susanna Marsden, and the couple had five children: Barbara (who died in infancy); Rosemary Collin Brooks (1920–1971), whose career included a period working for MI5; Vivian Collin Brooks (1922–2003) – a journalist who wrote a number of detective books under the pen name "Osmington Mills"; William Austen Brooks (1924–1986), also a journalist: and Edward Clarke Brooks (1928–2010) who became an actor and wrote a number of short stories.

His war service was followed by an increased awareness and involvement in politics and journalism. In 1921 he was employed by the Liverpool Courier; in 1923 he joined the Yorkshire Post, and moved in 1928 to their London office. This was followed by a move to the position of editor of the Financial News later that year. In 1933 he moved to the Sunday Dispatch, which began his long involvement with Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere. He was shortly elevated to the position of Editor of the Sunday Dispatch. With his work for Rothermere, the family spent time living both in London and also in Norfolk – in a house called "The Mount" on Rothermere's Stody estate; the relationship between Brooks and Rothermere was sufficiently close that he was named as literary legatee in Rothermere's will. He later worked on a number of other papers, being from 1941 to 1953 chairman and Editor of Truth, an exposé magazine of political and society issues, and wrote the magazine's "Letter to America" on a regular basis. He joined the Daily Express Group in 1953 and continued at the same time as chairman and leader writer of The Statist. Other clubs of which he was a member were The Carlton, the Royal Thames Yacht Club, the City Livery, the Reform and the Press. Collin Brooks was a prolific writer, with over fifty books to his name, from authoritative works on finance and legal cases, through literary novels under his pen name "Barnaby Brook" and two volumes of poetry, to what he called his "shockers" – detective stories which introduced such memorable characters as eccentric amateur sleuth Lord Tweed, Raeburn Steel, Dan'l Forray and his twin daughters Jo and Jack, Inspector "Doleful" Debenham, and the unforgettable Oswald Swete McTavish. In addition to his published works he produced, throughout his life, his own Journals. The Journals cover a period of some three decades, and run to millions of words. T. S. Eliot, a family friend, gave an address at Collin Brooks' memorial service at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street, London in 1959, which was attended by people from many walks of life with whom he had come into contact during his career.