David Perman obituary

My brother, David Perman, who has died aged 90, spent much of his journalistic career with the BBC, where he was head of its Arabic and South European services, before setting up his own publishing company, Rockingham Press, which concentrated on two of his great interests: poetry and local history.

Rockingham published new and established poets, including Adèle Geras, John Greening, William Oxley and Lotte Moos, alongside books (including by David himself) on Ware, the Hertfordshire town in which he lived from 1973 onwards. David also immersed himself in the local history and civic life of Ware, campaigning to protect old buildings, fundraising for their restoration and even doing some of the hands-on work himself.

He helped set up Ware Museum in 1986, chaired Ware Charities for 12 years, was involved in the establishment of a local food bank, and was made a freeman of the town in 2024. David was born in Islington, north London, to Leonard, a storeman in a motor parts company, and Gladys (nee Rockingham), a shop worker.

His mother’s family were canal people, and David travelled as a boy on his grandfather’s barge on the Regent’s Canal. At Highbury county grammar school he won a scholarship to study English at New College, Oxford, although he had to defer his place for two years to do his national service.

After graduation in 1959 he spent two years at Westcott House in Cambridge, training for the Anglican priesthood, but decided he did not have a vocation and was not ordained. Instead, he became a trainee journalist on the Oxford Mail in 1962, before in 1967 taking up a job as commissioning editor and subeditor on the Observer newspaper’s foreign news service, which provided foreign news for papers such as the Washington Post, Straits Times and Sydney Morning Herald.

Shortly after joining the Observer, David helped to establish the paper’s National Union of Journalists chapel, and served as father of the chapel until joining the BBC’s External Services in 1969, first as a talks writer, then as a features writer. He eventually became programme organiser of the BBC Arabic Service, working in London and across the Middle East, before joining the South European Service, where he headed its Greek section.

David set up Rockingham Press, which produced more than 90 titles, after taking early retirement from the BBC in 1990. For years he travelled around the country with a car boot full of books, building relationships with independent bookshops. In 1991 he also co-founded, with Frances Wilson, Ware Poets, which organises monthly poetry readings and events.

He was closely involved with the Torbay poetry festival in Devon and Acumen literary magazine, later becoming its interviews editor. David is survived by his long-term partner, Irene Higginson (the poet Danielle Hope) and three daughters, Lucy, Sarah and Alice, from his marriage to Jenny Hyams, which ended in divorce.