Henry Rose. February 8th 1958

There have been a few Jewish sports journalists of distinction.  In the USA perhaps the best known were Nat Fleischer, who created The Ring magazine, which was enormously influential in the world of boxing, and Howard Cosell, who was at the leading edge of sports casting in the USA.

In the UK it was Henry Rose.

 John Roberts in The team that wouldn’t die said of Rose: “Henry Rose, of the Daily Express, was an expansive showman whose controversial opinions irritated football supporters so much that they bought the paper every day”.

 He saw how sport was being reported in the States, and he pioneered a style that was sensationalist and exciting and appealed to the reader.

 The National Archives tell us that “he was a supporter of Manchester United, and a well-known and highly coloured figure at football matches, in his familiar homburg hat. Spectators would wait for him to arrive, and if Manchester United were playing Liverpool or Everton, the supporters of the opposing team would shout ‘Go home Henry Rose’, as if he had placed a jinx on their team.”

 He was also a recognised speaker at Jewish events, and was a member of the South Manchester Synagogue, Wilbraham Road.

 In 1936 he attended the Berlin Olympics and was among those who refused to give a Nazi salute. He publicised the disgraceful actions of the England team, and his stock rose accordingly. After World War II, he discovered he was on the Nazi black list and would have been killed had the German occupied England.

 In February 1958, a British European Airways flight to Manchester crashed on take-off at Munich Riem airport, killing 23 of the 44 passengers, including eight newspaper representatives. Henry Rose was one of them.

 Rose had a “hero’s funeral” with thousands lining the route from the Daily Express offices to Southern Cemetery, Manchester, where he was buried. Manchester’s 1000-strong taxi fleet offered their services free to get anyone who wanted to the funeral, and the route was lined with people – six deep in places.

 In his report of the funeral, we are told that one of Rose’s colleagues at The Express, Desmond Hackett, noted that his thousands of “followers” from lorry drivers, railway porters, policemen and petrol pump attendants to girl guides and housewives lined the route to pay their respects to “their King of Sport”.

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