Memoir Of An 'Old School' Newsman

HARD PRESSED is an amusing and self-deprecating memoir of an ‘old school' newsman who entered journalism as a 17-year-old apprentice and worked for newspapers and magazines for half a century.

During that time, John Marquis was an award-winning investigative reporter, an international boxing writer, the London Sports Editor of a major nation-wide newspaper group, a West Country weekly editor, a magazine publisher and Managing Editor of the Bahamas’ premier daily newspaper.

‘Mine wasn’t the most glorious career, but it certainly scored highly when it came to variety,’ he says, ‘and I can’t think of any other journalist whose career I’d swap with mine.’

This book traces the many phases of his journalistic journey and introduces readers to the ‘celebrities’ he met along the way, including Muhammad Ali and the Haitian tyrant Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier.

It offers an intriguing insight into life as a newspaperman - local, regional, national and international - during the second half of the 20th century.