Keith Farnsworth, author and journalist, is best known as a former sports editor of the old Morning Telegraph, Sheffield, and the author of 18 books on football, cricket and social and industrial history, etc.(1,2).
Born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, in May 1938, he attended Newhall, Pye Bank, Ellesmere and Burngreave schools, and started work in 1953 as a trainee weighing scale mechanic with CWS before joining the Sheffield Smelting Company as junior clerk. After spells at the Army Apprentices School, Harrogate, Yorks, and REME Boys’ School, Blackdown, Hants, he subsequently worked for W.H. Hewitt & Co., Hadfields Ltd, Weaver to Wearer, Industrial Products Ltd, International Twist Drill Co, and Newton Chambers & Co, Thorncliffe, where he eventually joined the company’s Press Office, and worked with Alf Dow, a former Sheffield Telegraph & Star news editor. Recruited by the Sheffield Telegraph in December 1963, he later had spells with the Birmingham Post and the Sheffield Star before rejoining what was now the Sheffield Morning Telegraph as a sports writer/sub editor in April 1966, and becoming sports editor in 1971. Quit sports department in summer of 1976, and, after a spell in the newspaper’s features department, became editor of Quality, official journal of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce in December 1977, remaining there until June 1985 when the magazine closed. He spent the period from 1985 until early 2003 working as a freelance writer, concentrating mainly on football coverage for the Daily Telegraph for more than 14 years, and producing a number of books, which included several local best-sellers. In 1982 his book on Sheffield Wednesday FC, entitled simply Wednesday!, was the first history of the club to be published for nearly 60 years, and it was one of Sheffield City Libraries’ most successful publications. His other books include Sheffield’s East Enders, Before & After Bramall Lane, Bringing the News to Sheffield, Sheffield Wednesday: A Complete Record 1867-1987, Sheffield Football, A History (2 vols), Wednesday Every Day of the Week, Woodcock’s World, The Owls & The Blades, and A Sheffield Boy. He also wrote Dooley! in collaboration with local football legend Derek Dooley (3).
1. A Sheffield Boy (autobiography, 1999).2. See also biographical notes in other publications listed above.3. See introduction by Tony Pritchett (Sheffield Star), to Dooley!, Hallamshire Press, 2000.
