Michael Clayton writes:

Larry Harris, who has died aged 78, started in journalism on the Birmingham Post, which was a very good paper in those days. He made his way to the Daily Express in Fleet Street at a time when the Express was the leading morning paper, and Larry proved more than capable of working under pressure.

Then in the mid 1960’s he was one of a large intake of Fleet Street reporters who joined BBC TV and Radio news.  Larry had a distinctive deep voice which was excellent on radio and TV. During his career in television Larry was the Royal correspondent for a while, but he will be most remembered for his many trips to Iceland during the “Cod War”. He left the BBC in the 1980’s, and worked as an executive in commercial television in the Midlands. But after a while, he returned to BBC and joined Radio 4's “The World Tonight” as a presenter, which he very much enjoyed. Larry was remarkably competent, handling new challenges with imperturbable professionalism in a wide variety of career moves.

He was an amazingly versatile man. Apart from his journalism and broadcasting, Larry was genuinely artistic - he was an excellent draughtsman and could write effective satirical verse. He had many cartoons published and signed "Larry" in Punch and other publications, and in retirement at Empingham in Rutland he gained much pleasure from painting and drawing. He took a very tough Arts degree course and gained his degree.

Larry was very popular with his BBC colleagues, and he had a happy family life. The recent death of his wife Pat was a tremendous shock at a time, when he was himself battling against ill health.  However, he rallied and sorted out a new home for himself at Market Harborough, Leicestershire, but had to return to hospital recently for a major heart operation, but sadly he died after a period in intensive care. He leaves a son Nigel and daughter Lisa, and grandchildren.


Keith Graves writes:

Larry Harris and I worked on the Daily Express together in the days when it was a great newspaper, and Fleet Street actually meant something. I was based in London and Larry was a regional reporter based in Birmingham.

In those days regional reporters were a very real part of the lifeblood of national newspapers. These days, alas, they hardly exist. Larry was a traditional national newspaper reporter - a grafter who knew his patch. Only the best made it to the Daily Express in those days (he said modestly) and Larry was one of those.

Unlike some of us who had delusions of grandeur and became foreign correspondents or war correspondents, Larry was an unpretentious correspondent, and a very solid and reliable one at that.