Patrick Ensor, the dynamic editor of the Guardian Weekly, has died at the age of 60. He had been diagnosed in February with inoperable cancer of the pancreas and told he probably had 12 months to live, but he collapsed on Sunday at his holiday house in Provence, where he was taking a short break with his wife Judith. Typical of both of them, they had refused to accept that he would fail to pull through; only a week ago he had been doing his regular 50 lengths at the local French swimming pool.
Patrick joined the Guardian in 1974 as a features subeditor; in 1980 he was promoted to arts editor, a job he loved and to which he dedicated himself. So it came out of the blue to his colleagues when he left after five years for New Zealand. Not the least of the surprise was that he had immersed himself in Fitzrovia, the area of central London where he lived, running a news sheet and attempting to revive the cultural life for which that slightly louche district, part Bloomsbury, part Soho, had been famous before the second world war.
But going to New Zealand as deputy editor of the Dominion was a new adventure for Patrick - and for Judy, an artist who had retrained and set up in practice as an osteopath. In 1992 he was back in London, where he began his second career on the Guardian. Typically, he had loved the Dominion job, but, he asked rhetorically, what do you do at the weekend in New Zealand? Play golf. Which, in fact, he did rather well.
Patrick was the son of Michael de Normann Ensor, a distinguished colonial civil servant on the Gold Coast (later Ghana). His grandmother was the theosophist and educationist Beatrice Ensor. His mother Mona was advanced in pregnancy when her doctor advised her to return to England for the birth, so Patrick was born in Bournemouth, though he returned to Accra in early infancy and went to boarding school at Port Elizabeth, South Africa, from the age of seven, before the family returned to London in 1956. He went on to Bryanston school, Dorset, and Bristol University, where, although his key subject at A-level had been classics, he took a degree in philosophy and economics.
His first spell on the Guardian followed a period in the late 1960s and early 70s at the Yorkshire Evening Press, the Oxford Mail and the Times Higher Education Supplement, Screen International and the Tower Community newspaper. He was able to put in the hours he did because he kept himself almost indecently fit by swimming and playing tennis. The undoubted highlight of Patrick's sporting achievements occurred when the Guardian cricket team organised a tour to Sri Lanka, where among the opponents was an Imperial Tobacco XI containing the great Test batsman and Sri Lanka captain Duleep Mendis. As a bowler, Patrick was a dependable medium-paced trundler, so if Mendis was dumbfounded to be dismissed by him for a duck that was nothing compared to the astonished delight of the Guardian team.
He was also a good singer, and for the last four years had been an integral part of the bass section of the Guardian Angels, the company choir.
One of his tennis companions at the Coolhurst Club, in Highgate, north London, was the then Guardian film critic Derek Malcolm, with whom he struck up a lifetime friendship. Patrick had an old-fashioned gallantry unusual at the paper's head office in Farringdon Road, and could deliver an insult with such a charming smile that the victim would not realise he had been shafted until it was too late to respond; Malcolm was one of the few who could reply in kind without a blink.
Back in England after the New Zealand experience, Patrick at first returned to the features subs desk, but a year later, in 1993, John Perkin (obituary, February 14 2002) retired from the editorship of the Weekly and the Guardian editor Peter Preston appointed Patrick. One of his earliest tasks was to move the Weekly from its headquarters in Cheadle, Cheshire, to Farringdon Road.
He immersed himself deeply in the culture of the paper, and regularly went on promotional and meet-the-reader tours abroad. He pinned up around the office a collection of snaps of people reading the paper in exotic locations around the world. He knew about the computer software, knew how to shape the news from the daily paper into a commodity that would survive transplantation to the Americas, to South Africa, to Australia with a sell-by-date that was value for the full week. He also made fortnightly broadcasts from London to Radio New Zealand.
When he took a holiday, his deputies felt they worked for Patrick's paper rather than the Guardian. He was inspirational and they did not want to let him down. He worked between 50 and 60 hours a week He checked everything and his staff swear that not a typo escaped him. He always made the tea and coffee when it was his turn.
Until three months ago he was immersed in the redesign of the Weekly, which turned it into a G2-shaped journal. Judith was his rock and made his commitment possible. She survives him, as do his father and brother.
Alan Rusbridger writes: Patrick was a wonderful mixture of charm, steel, energy and stamina. He edited Guardian Weekly for 14 years, taking boundless personal and professional pride in getting it just right, week in, week out. He was a punctilious editor of the old school as well as a quick-witted, tireless and kind colleague. We'll miss him a great deal.
· Patrick Ensor, journalist, born December 2 1946; died July 1 2007