Ted
Castle was born in 1907. He worked as a journalist who worked for
the Daily Mirror before being recruited
by Stefan Lorant and Tom
Hopkinson to join the Picture Post
in 1938. Castle married Barbara Castle
in 1944.
In
1950 Tom Hopkinson sent
James Cameron and Bert
Hardy to report on the Korean War.
While in Korea the two men produced three illustrated stories for
Picture Post. This included
the landing of General Douglas MacArthur
and
his troops at Inchon. Cameron also wrote a piece about the way that
the South Koreans were treating their political prisoners. Edward
G. Hulton considered
the article to be "communist propaganda" and Hopkinson was
forced to resign. Castle took over as editor but six months later
he was sacked by Edward G. Hulton.
In
1973 Castle had open-heart surgery. He recovered and the following
year was made a life peer and was an active member of the House
of Lords. Ted Castle died on 26th December 1979.
(1)
Barbara
Castle, Fighting All The Way
(1993)
I did not take much to him at first sight: tall, dapper, with a neat
moustache, he looked a bit like David Niven, and I suspected him of
being just a slick journalist. I gradually changed my mind. His marriage
had broken up and he was waiting for his decree absolute, so he had
a lot of time to spare for me. There then
ensued one of the most unusual courtships in Cupid's history. He would
meet me outside the Fish Division and listen with all the appearance
of enthralled interest while I regaled him with stories about dehydrated
mullet and fish hooks for Iceland, to say
nothing of the mysteries of snoek. As a younger man (he was then in
his early thirties), he had been very active in NUJ politics, organizing
everything from press balls to strikes, and had been recognized as
a bit of a lad, but I soon found that he was a serious socialist.
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