Lasting memory of the great Daily Express reporter Philip Geddes, killed by an IRA bomb
Saturday, December 17, 1983: what if Philip Geddes had turned left out of Harrods and into Brompton Road instead of following police — and his instincts as a reporter — into Hans Crescent? Minutes later he was dead, killed by an IRA car bomb, aged just 24.
Today Philip would be 67 and I have no doubt still enjoying a stellar career. His contemporaries at Oxford, among them Ian Hislop and Michael Crick, certainly think so and so did his great university friend Theresa Brasier, now better known by her married name, Theresa May, pictured above. Sadly we will never be sure...
What we do know is that his legacy is the annual Geddes Prize for Student Journalism, now open to all undergraduates at Oxford and not just those at his old college, St Edmund Hall. Since 1998 the prize has also been marked by an annual lecture given by a prominent journalist, some of whom have themselves been winners of the prize.
Last Friday we went to the one given by Stephen Bush of the FT in Oxford's Examination Schools just across the road from Teddy Hall ("You're a bit long in the tooth to be taking exams", said my cab driver, thus forfeiting a tip). Also there was Rachel Trethewey whose talent took her straight from winning the prize in 1989 to a job on the Express. (Her latest book, Muv, the story of the Lady Redesdale, mother of the Mitford girls, is terrific by the way).
Alas, missing from the event because he was unwell was Christopher Wilson — our very own Wislon — whose indefatigable persistence got the Geddes Prize off the ground in 1984.
It started with a whip round in the Poppinjay and rapidly expanded to slightly bigger contributions from the Express's rivals; Vere Harmsworth biked round a cheque for £1,000 as soon as he heard of Wislon's plan, immediately followed by the Mirror, The Times, Telegraph and PA. It took days for the Express management to realise that maybe it should chip in too.
Shamefully, when the Express did finally contribute, the amount — £1,500 — was shaved off the £150,000 Death in Service payment given to Philip's grieving parents. At this point I would normally launch into a tirade against Little Lord Stevens but I can't because it was two years before United bought the Express group. Trafalgar House was the guilty party.
Nevertheless, the Geddes Trust was born and in 1985 it awarded its first prize, £1,000. The amount is now £3,000 and there are three other affiliated awards, each of £2,500; the Clive Taylor prize for sports writing, the Ronnie Payne (briefly at the Express) prize for foreign reporting and the Paddy Coulter for opinion journalism. This was introduced last year following the sudden death of my dear old school friend, the great campaigner Paddy. There is also now a Geddes Fellow at Teddy Hall.
But make no mistake: none of this would have been possible but for Wislon's energy and determination. He was probably spurred on by the initial decision of the acting editor of the Express not to put the story on Page One, a decision that met with outrage by Chris and all others working that Sunday and was immediately reversed. But, unlike the Mail and others, there was still no picture of Philip on Page One.
Over those years, with a deadly mixture of charm and cunning, Wislon has raised more than £150,000 for the fund and he deserves every accolade Oxford can give. All while writing books and pieces for the Mail, Telegraph and the Drone and appearing on innumerable TV programmes about the royals.
For younger readers (do we have any?) or those not on the Express in the 1980s, don't take my word for the promise Philip Geddes showed. Ian Hislop in his 2017 lecture said: "Geddes seemed to be so much further ahead than anyone and we were all rather jealous. After we graduated, I was working in London as a tutor while he was on Londoner's Diary at the Standard before getting a job on the Express. He was an extraordinary figure and when he died it was almost as if it had been written, you know, young journalist follows a story and the bomb goes off. It's still extraordinary to think he was just 24.”
In 2020, Michael Crick in his lecture spoke of Philip volunteering his services to Cherwell which Crick edited. "He was keen, smartly dressed, and a first-rate reporter, writing terrific pieces for John Evelyn, our gossip column. He was great fun and of course his greatest moment came in November 1978 when Richard Nixon addressed the Oxford Union.
"We were pathetic, giving him such an easy time, so reverential. Nobody dared to ask him directly about Watergate. Then a 19-year-old fresher from Teddy Hall, handsome, slightly diffident and erudite stood up and quoted from John Webster's Duchess of Malfi. It was Philip with the killer question delivered in such a polite and smiling way and it got the killer answer". This was the exchange:
Geddes: "To misquote Webster, should something chance to poison the head, death and disease throughout the land would spread. Does the honourable gentleman not agree that honour is the most important element in government?"
Nixon immediately got the true purpose of Philip's question: "You didn't mention Watergate but I will, I screwed up and I paid the price", It was the first time Nixon had come anywhere near admitting his guilt and the moment made headlines in every paper here and around the world.
In 2024 at a 40th anniversary Geddes Trust event in the Palace of Westminster organised by Theresa May, I asked her how she remembered Philip. "He was brilliant and so lovely and I have thought many times what he might have achieved. He was ambitious and had the ammunition to reach anything in whatever field he wanted".
One other point: the Geddes Prize is meant for clever and hard-working students like Philip and Miss Brasier, and not only those from a monied background for whom Oxbridge is part of the expected family trajectory. Both were products of grammar schools, in Philip's case Barrow Grammar in one of the most deprived areas of Britain. His late father was a tailor from Poland and he and his wife were so immensely proud of their son, their only child. He wasn't exactly a Bash Street Kid but nor was he a Brideshead Boy.
I doff my cap to what Christopher Wilson has achieved with the Geddes Prize for no monetary reward and precious little recognition from Oxford. He would be the university's Chancellor if I had my way. As long as he promised to keep contributing to The Drone...
*The Geddes lectures are available online on the Geddes Trust website (though not the one given three years ago by Huw Edwards) and Nixon's address to the Union is also online in rather foggy black and white. Worth watching to see a very young Philip but also to see what an operator Nixon was.
*****
Has there ever been a more cynical and shameful picture than the one on Friday of Trump holding a 'prayer breakfast' at the White House? There he is, head bowed and eyes closed while various adoring evangelicals stand around with their hands on his shoulders. Praying for what? More deaths of Iranian schoolgirls or that the Epstein files don't finally do for this appalling man?
He has started a war which he says in his latest swipe at Keir Starmer is already won but which increases in ferocity by the hour. He has no clue how it will end or when or indeed what purpose it is serving. Other than doing what his fellow warmonger Netanyahu dictates.
Don't take my word for it, listen to the judgment of a real soldier, General Sir Richard Shirreff, former Deputy Supreme NATO Commander Europe who says: "The special relationship does not exist. It's a complete fantasy. America does what America wants to do...Britain shooting down drones, either offensive or defensive, is invidious frankly. The fact is, if Britain is involved, our hand is in the mangle...we should not in anyway shape or form be involved with America closely because it is being led by a couple of gung-ho nutters like Trump and Pete Hegseth.
"Yet again we have an American President who has gone to war, a war of choice, a war of hubris frankly, without any clear idea how the war ends...tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Another real soldier, not a mollycoddled rich boy who dodged the draft five times, was General Dwight D Eisenhower — President Eisenhower. He summed up war thus: "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
Trump and the ignoramus Hegseth are thugs who see what they have embarked upon as some giant video game. They even gave it a video name, Operation Epic Fury. They are a well-matched pair. Hegseth had three wives by the age of 40, is anti everything especially gay rights and abortion and is a so-called Christian Nationalist. He was a notorious drunk and was charged with assault and rape. An all-American hero.
When the bodies of killed US airmen were returned home this disgrace of a president thinks it is right and proper to turn up in a white baseball cap with USA emblazoned on it. In gold of course.
As the California governor Gavin Newsom said: "Take your hat off you disgusting little man.”
AND FINALLY
En route to Oxford by train we were seated next to a beautiful young thing who struck up conversation. She revealed that she had recently recovered after breaking her pelvis when her horse threw her in deepest Gloucestershire. "The same thing happened to my uncle but he managed to get back on and rode to A&E at Gloucester Royal.”
It's certainly one way of getting round lengthy waits for an ambulance.
ALAN FRAME
10 March 2026
Geddes asking Richard Nixon a question at the Oxford Union
