Geoffrey Cannon (born 12 April 1940) is an English author, journalist and former magazine editor, and scholar. From 1968 to 1972, he was the music critic for The Guardian, a role that made him the first dedicated rock critic at a British daily newspaper. Having worked as the arts editor for New Society magazine, he became editor of the BBC publication Radio Times from 1969 to 1979. During that time, he also wrote on music and popular culture for The Listener, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, Creem, Rock et Folk, Melody Maker and Time Out.
Since the early 1980s, Cannon has worked in public health, mostly food and nutrition policy. He co-authored with Hetty Einzig, the bestseller Dieting Makes You Fat (1983), and with Caroline Walker, the bestseller The Food Scandal: What's Wrong with the British Diet and How to Put It Right (1984). Cannon's other books include The Politics of Food.
He is a former director of science for the World Cancer Research Fund and now lives in Brazil where he is a member of the Centre for Epidemiological Studies in Nutrition and Health (NUPENS), University of São Paulo, Brazil.
Early years and education Cannon won a scholarship to Christ's Hospital public school in Horsham in the county of Sussex. He subsequently attended Oxford University as an undergraduate at Balliol College.
He recalls that hearing Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring played loudly on a family friend's state-of-the-art hi-fi, at the age of fourteen, first enlightened him to the power of music. As further key events, he cites playing "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" in a record-shop listening booth in Horsham, and a year later "when a van came down a street in Essen, Germany, playing the demo of 'Heartbreak Hotel'".
Career United Kingdom
Magazines, popular culture, music journalism
Oxford Opinion At Oxford in 1960-1961, Cannon was editor and owner, with Stephan Feuchtwang, of Oxford Opinion (OO). Regular contributors included Richard Gott, John Gittings, British historian Timothy Mason, JG Farrell, Ian Hamilton, and Kevin Crossley-Holland. OO introduced the film commentary allied with Cahiers du Cinéma by Ian Cameron, Mark Shivas, VF Perkins, and others, who later founded Movie magazine. OO was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "incomparably the best produced of all Oxford magazines".
New Society, The Guardian Cannon's first published writings on popular culture appeared in 1962 in New Society, where he was a founder-member of the editorial staff. He worked in-house for the magazine, later becoming its design, art, production, and arts editor. From 1967, he began writing on popular culture for, and redesigned, The Listener, under the editorship of Karl Miller, and in 1968 began writing a weekly column on pop and rock music for The Guardian. Along with Tony Palmer of The Observer, a Sunday newspaper, he was one of the leading figures in the emergence of British rock criticism during the late 1960s. George Melly, who became The Observers first popular culture commentator in 1965, described the pair as seeking to "establish a critical apparatus" with which to evaluate contemporary popular music.
Helped by his association with The Guardian, Cannon was able to contribute more substantial articles to the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Sun-Times, and to underground magazines such as Creem. He wrote the documentary film London Rock (1970), focusing on the UK's counterculture movement. He recalls that, together with Rolling Stone journalists David Dalton and Jonathan Cott, he joined Granada Television documentary-makers such as Jo Durden-Smith, John Sheppard and Michael Darlow in devising "prime-time networked shows designed as anthems of the revolution". Among these late-1960s projects, he says that the Johnny Cash at San Quentin TV special was his idea, and he "share[s] credit" for the ideas behind the concert films The Doors Are Open and The Stones in the Park. He also directed the film of Frank Zappa's performance at the 1970 Palermo Pop Festival, for RAI, Italy's national public broadcaster.
In July 1971, he was one of four speakers on "Youth and Music" at the inaugural International Music Industry Conference hosted by Billboard magazine. In his address, he discussed rock music's inspirational role on the lifestyle of contemporary youth and also its ability to provide "the catalyst for styles of death", with regard to the counterculture-related deaths of Sharon Tate in Los Angeles, Meredith Hunter at Altamont, and Weather Underground radical Diana Oughton.
Cannon says he was frustrated by The Guardians habit of cutting down his submissions and stopped writing for the paper in 1972. In addition, he cites his lack of interest in contemporary musical trends – a perspective that was reflected in his being awarded "Pseud of the Year" by the satirical magazine Private Eye for two consecutive years. Later in the 1970s, he wrote what he considers some of his "best pieces" for Melody Maker and Time Out, when they were edited by Richard Williams.
Radio Times In early 1969, Cannon became editor of Radio Times, which had a circulation of 3.8 million. Brian Gearing, his successor as editor, wrote: "Cannon arrived, backed by a young and talented staff … the changes he made were the most far-reaching ever to be introduced … At the end of the 1970s, Radio Times … was still Britain’s largest and most successful magazine." Elkan Allan, then editor of The Sunday Times Guide for Viewers, criticised Radio Times as containing “peripheral and tangential articles, frequently of a trivial nature”.Allan, Elkan. 'Times, gentlemen, please ...' The Listener, 11 March 1976 In 1976, Radio Times and Cannon won Design and Art Direction Gold Awards for editorial design.Sachs, Richard. "Long tradition behind the gold and silver". The Times, 9 June 1976 Cannon left the magazine in 1979.
Running Cannon wrote a monthly Fun Runner column for Running magazine from 1979 to 1987. He organised a team, including himself, to run the 1980 New York marathon.Cannon, Geoffrey. Fun Runner. Running, May, July–August, November–December 1980, January–February 1981. He then created London 1982/50, a group of 50 who trained for and ran the 1982 London marathon.Cannon, Geoffrey, Fun Runner. Running, March–April, May–June, September–October, November–December 1981, March, May, June 1982. As a result, four citizen running clubs were formed in different parts of London, including the Serpentine Running Club, which he co-founded.Paterson, Hazel. Serpentine Running Club. The First Ten Years. London: SRC, 1992.
Health, nutrition, and fitness
The Sunday Times, Dieting Makes you Fat After his ten-year editorship of Radio Times, Cannon became an assistant editor of The Sunday Times. His focus on fitness resulted in regular coverage of the 'Getting in Shape' citizen running project, which he developed from Fun Runner ‘82, and in the 1982 New Year issue of The Sunday Times ran a feature by Cannon with the title ‘Dieting makes you fat’.Cannon, Geoffrey. 'Dieting makes you fat'. The Sunday Times, 3 January 1982 With co-author Hetty Einzig, Cannon then wrote the book Dieting Makes You Fat, which became a UK number one best seller.Booksellers’ bestsellers. Dieting Makes You Fat listed as number 1 best-seller. The Bookseller, 30 July 1963
Cannon then discovered that an official report on the state of British nutrition and health had been delayed and allegedly suppressed, apparently because of its overall message, that the typical British diet was a main cause of many disabling or deadly conditions and diseases.National Advisory Committee on Nutrition Education (NACNE), A Discussion Paper on Proposals for Nutritional Guidelines for Health Education in Britain, 1983. London: Health Education Council, 1983 Successive drafts of this report were leaked to him. The result was a Sunday Times front page lead news story and a full-page inside feature article.Cannon, Geoffrey. “Censored — a diet for life and death”. The Sunday Times, 3 July 1983.Cannon, Geoffrey. “Battle for the British diet”. The Sunday Times, 3 July 1983. These articles won the Van den Berghs reporting Award for 1983.Van den Berghs. reporting Award, 1983.
Cannon left The Sunday Times in 1983.
New Health In early 1984, he became editor of New Health magazine, published by Haymarket Press. From October 1984 until New Health closed in October 1986, Cannon wrote monthly columns, winning The Publisher’s 1986 best specialist columnist award.The Publisher. Best specialist columnist (consumer), 1986. In 1985, he originated a six-part series on ‘Fat to Fit’, and in 1986 another five-part series on food additives, which won The Periodical Proprietors Association Award for best campaign of the year.Periodical Proprietors Association. Best campaign, 1986 (with Felicity Lawrence). Both series became books.
The Food Scandal In 1984, with Caroline Walker, an English food campaigner and nutritionist who later became his second wife, Cannon wrote The Food Scandal, which became a UK best-seller.Bestsellers. The Sunday Times, 8 July 1984 The Times ran three full-page features by Cannon derived from the book — "Food, treacherous food",Cannon, Geoffrey. “The Food Scandal. Food, treacherous food”. The Times. 11 June 1984. "The cover-up that kills",Cannon, Geoffrey. “The Food Scandal. The cover-up that kills”. The Times, 12 June 1984. and "So you think you eat healthily".Cannon, Geoffrey. “The Food Scandal. So you think you eat healthily”. The Times, 13 June 1984. Two chapters of The Food Scandal dealt with salt and sugar, both identified in the NACNE report as being consumed excessively. Brands containing these were named, including Bovril. In fact, it contained caramel, which in industrial form is not a variation of sugar. Beecham, then the owner of Bovril, sued and was granted an injunction in the High Court against the authors and publishers.The Times. "Libel claim as diet book withdrawn", 3 July 1984 In 1985, an updated and expanded paperback version was published. Cannon subsequently authored The Good Fight, a biography of Walker, who died from colon cancer in 1988.
The Politics of Food Despite its portentous title, Cannon’s book The Politics of Food (1987) only explored how the food product manufacturing industry, undeterred by government and expert advisors, manipulated the food supply and thus what was consumed in the UK in the 1980s. It received mixed reviews.Rogaly, Joe. “The Politics of Food”. The Financial Times, 11 June 1987Anon. 'Politics and food'. The Grocer, 6 June 1987 The Economist was sceptical, and Bernard Levin wrote in The Times: "What we eat and how we eat it is the next target for those who will not rest until they have compelled us, under the threat of prosecution, to do what they wish… The undoubted leader of the new species of fanatic is Mr Geoffrey Cannon."Anon. “Eat, drink and be ill”. The Economist, 6 June 1987.Levin, Bernard. “Free me from the tyranny of foodies”. The Times, 13 April 1987 The book was serialised in The Independent, in 1987 winning the Argos Award for best newspaper feature, and in She magazine, winning the Publisher Award for best magazine feature.Argos. National newspaper award, 1987The Publisher. Most outstanding feature, 1987
In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Cannon worked with professional and public interest civil society organisations. These included the London Road Runners Club, where he and colleagues devised the STAR*RANK (standards, records and ranking) age-graded system used in accredited road running races,Cannon, Geoffrey. “STAR*RANK. An idea whose time has come”. In: 1989 Road Race Fixture List. London: Amateur Athletic Association, London Road Runners Club, British Association of Road Races, 1989 and the Caroline Walker Trust, of which he was co-founder and secretary.Caroline Walker Trust. 1988-1989. The first year. London: The Caroline Walker Trust, October 1989