Jack Hargreaves - Early Career

Early Career

Born in London in 1911 to James and Ada Hargreaves (née Jubb), Jack (christened John Herbert) was one of three brothers. The family was rooted in Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, but James Hargreaves based himself partly in London for commercial advantage and to allow his wife the benefit of the capital's midwifery. The brothers attended Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood near London after which Edward and Ronald Hargreaves pursued successful careers in medicine, while Jack went to study at the Royal Veterinary College at London University in 1929, leaving the University to earn a living as a copywriter, journalist and script writer for radio and films. By the late thirties he had established a reputation for his pioneering approaches to radio broadcasting.

At the start of World War II broadcasting was recognised as part of the war effort. Hargreaves' talents in this field meant he faced being recruited to a restricted post in radio. Instead he joined the Royal Artillery as a private, quickly became an NCO, entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment. Even so, Hargreaves' reputation as a communicator went ahead of him. He was recruited to the staff of General Montgomery to play a role setting up broadcasting services to allied forces before and after D-Day. He left the army in 1945 with substantive rank of major, having briefly held acting rank of lieutenant-colonel.

After the war, Hargreaves continued his media career and during the 1950s was editor of Lilliput magazine and Picture Post where he commissioned work from Bert Hardy. His brilliance as a communications manager led to him being recruited to the National Farmers Union by Jim Turner, later Lord Netherthorpe, celebrated for his success as a lobbyist for farmers. Working closely with Turner, Hargreaves organised and developed the NFU's Information Department, founding the British Farmer magazine during an almost intractable crisis of trust between NFU HQ and the members of the largest union in the country, many of whom were experiencing seismic change in the agricultural economy.

Hargreaves loved angling. Bemused at the way it had, from "sociological, technical, financial and Malthusian" causes become tribalised by class and species, he wrote Fishing for a Year (1951), arguing "for regression" - the pursuit of different fish, in separate places and varied methods throughout the licensed seasons. "What do they know of fishing" he wrote "who know only one fish and one way to fish for him?" Yet his language was seldom so polemic and never adversarial. Hargreaves' style was seductive and evocative, perfectly complemented, in this first book, by the drawings of his friend Bernard Venables:

"It is one of the most excellent provisions of Nature" he wrote in a chapter for the warmest time of the year "that chub are to be angled for on hot summer afternoons ... When the grass is high and full of hum and rustle, when the comfrey blooms along the edge of the water and the air shivers in the heat, the chub lie just under the surface in slacks and corners and eddies all along the bank. You will see them and you will think they have not seen you". His writing and contacts among anglers saw the president of The Piscatorial Society, Sir Robert Saundby, asking Hargreaves to organise the Society's library. With typical thoroughness the collection was removed to Jack's home, leaving it fully catalogued with not a volume unread. This was when he became sceptical about the opinion of the immortal 17th century author of The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton, as to the culinary qualities of the chub - a dish Hargreaves described as "eating cotton wool full of pins and needles".