MARK Keighley, a Bradford-born journalist and author who chronicled the fortunes of the wool textile industry for more than four decades, has died aged 77.

Born in Eccleshill, Mark joined the Wool Record magazine in 1962 as a sub-editor at a time when the wool trade employed more than 120,000 production workers.

He rose to edit the then Bradford-based ‘Bible’ of the wool trade and retired from the editorship in 2000.

He started in journalism after leaving Belle Vue Grammar School in 1955. Mark joined the publicity department at Hepworth & Grandage, then one of Bradford’s ‘big three’ engineering companies.

He returned to Hepworth & Grandage following his National Service with the 3rd Infantry Division Signal Regiment, which included a posting in Cyprus, and edited the company’s monthly newsletter.

In 2007 after four years of painstaking research, Mark wrote and published Wool City, a book charting the importance of the wool trade to Bradford.

Following his retirement, Mark and wife Hazel, who predeceased him in 2005, moved from Bingley where they had lived for more than 30 years to the Lake District.