FORMER Herts Advertiser editor and respected golf writer Alan Booth has died at the age of 97.

Alan, who lived for many years in Westminster Court, St Albans, with his late wife Isabel, edited the Herts Advertiser from the early 1960s until the mid 1970s when it was a 97-page broadsheet.

He was living in Garston at the time of his death from pneumonia at Watford General Hospital.

Golf was his great passion and he knew a lot of the great players including Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros as a result of travelling worldwide as a writer on the sport. When at home he was a member of Verulam Golf Club.

Alan was born in Manchester and was a sergeant instructor on wireless for a Lancaster Squadron at Coningsby during the war.

Paying tribute to him, his great friend and former Herts Advertiser chief photographer, Tony Gregory, said: “He was one of the finest editors I have ever worked with. He gave me the most wonderful job I have ever had. I had known him for over 50 years and he was a very nice gentle man.”

A date for the funeral still has to be arranged.