OPINION: We will miss Malcolm Neesam greatly - Sharon Canavar, Harrogate International Festivals

I’m sure the paper will be full of tributes to the late, great Malcolm Neesam this week, but I wanted to write something from the Harrogate International Festivals as he was a supporter of our work, a critical friend and we will miss him greatly.

I’d always known about Malcolm from his series in the Harrogate Advertiser, and growing up in the town I loved to pick up his books and relished the pictures and his historical anecdotes of bygone times.

We got to know him more through his attendance at concerts as part of the Festivals and when I was on maternity leave with my daughter we’d go for a regular coffee at Betty’s to put the world to rights whilst a man who wrote the strongest, vociferous and carefully researched letters to the council, the paper and about my festival programming, held a two month old baby and told her all about the history of Betty’s.