Angela Candlin

Nov 16 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

IT WAS the Swinging ’60s and she was beautiful with her honey-blonde hair and knowing smile. Everybody could see that.

But the young photo-grapher with the keen eye and romantic heart could see more than that. Before him was the perfect woman – talented, sensitive, funny, sexy, the lover of wild flowers and woods, who rode her horse over the muddy fields in the morning. To him, she was perfect then.

And to him, she was perfect through all her years of motherhood and success, when thousands read her stories and columns and looked through the Daily Post for the portrait above her name.

As a mother, Angela Candlin’s style matured from that of a highly-talented reporter to that of a writer, whose thoughts always engaged those of her readers.

For example, in 1989, son Tom had an urge to eat the Samaritans’ cake at a local “fayre”. “It sat there flaunting itself in the middle of the stall – a voluptuous, Victoria sponge oozing jam, cream and charisma,” noted Angela.

So the family bought the cake and arranged to collect it later, but, on their return, the stall had gone. Angela’s husband speedily traced the cake to the charity’s regional HQ, and emerged with it in a bag proclaiming: “Suicide? Despair? Talk to the Samaritans any time, day or night”.

Angela was brilliant at writing about teenagers, their anxieties, the triumphs, falls and moods, the vanities and fashions. At the source of her writing were Lucy, Laura, Tom and William, the children she had with her husband, Stephen Shakeshaft, chief photographer and then picture editor of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

Angela was brought up in Aughton, West Lancs, where her father, Alec, had a mechanical-engineering business. She loved country life and her childhood pony, Rufus. From school, she joined the Ormskirk Advertiser as a reporter.

She then moved to the Daily Post and Echo, and began dating Stephen after the 1966 Christmas party.

By the time they married the following November, Angela was the first female reporter in the Daily Mail’s Manchester office. She then freelanced. Her first pregnancy led to the Echo column, Diary of a Young Mother, setting the style for much of her subsequent writing.

She was a wonderful, witty writer, who has left behind hundreds of articles, many illustrated by Stephen.

Angela Candlin, journalist; born May 1, 1944, died November 11, 2007.