NECROLOG

BARRIE PENROSE

The British investigative journalist and author Barrie Penrose died in July 2020 aged 78 following complications due to Parkinson’s disease. He is best known for his investigation of the Jeremy Thorpe scandal in the 1970s and for outing John Cairncross as the Cambridge spy ring’s ‘Fifth Man’.

Born in Croydon, Penrose studied at the London School of Economics at the same time as Mick Jagger. Beginning his journalistic career at the ’s Paris office, he began working for the BBC in 1970, where he began to make a name for himself as a persistent