Robert Kelly, who spent his lifetime as a reporter, editor, writer and collector of Manx postcards and books, has died at the age of 78.

He left school in 1956 at the age of 16 and immediately started as a cub reporter with Isle of Man Times in Athol Street, Douglas.

Robert collated and wrote the sport for the Daily Times for a short while from 1957, also producing the island’s first popular music column and the district news for Ramsey and the north.

The Times had been in the ownership of the Brown family, but was then bought by Frenchman Henri Leopold Dor, who already owned the rival Isle of Man Examiner.

His shorthand skills soon led Robert on to general court reporting, inquests and coverage of the local legislature.

As the Isle of Man (Weekly) Times reporters were more expert at recording proceedings in shorthand, their reports had been gathered together and published in one volume from the late 1880s.

This continued until 1964 when Robert was part of the last team to cover proceedings in Tynwald and the Legislative Council verbatim, prior to the introduction of in-house tape recorders.

He worked as a freelance for Granada and Border television channels, as well as the Daily Mirror, Life Magazine (USA), also contributing to the early Manx Radio news bulletins in 1967 and 1968 when the Isle of Man Examiner was contracted to provide the coverage.

Having amalgamated with the Examiner, the reporting staff from the Times relocated to Hill Street where Robert edited the Green Final sports newspaper for one season before becoming editor of the Isle of Man Weekly Times in his early 30s.

In 1983 he became group editor, overseeing the Manx Star and Weekly Times while also editing the Examiner.

This continued until 1987 when the titles were taken over by the current Isle of Man Newspapers group following a somewhat acrimonious dispute between HL Dor and the printers’ and journalists’ unions.

Robert admitted at the time that he lost some friends and made some enemies, but his biggest regret was losing contact with the newspapers that he’d cherished so strongly.

Over the years he produced a number of monographs (specialist books on a single subject), among them being The Vikings and Tynwald, TT Pioneers, a Manx Rally Special, the Summerland Story, With a Song in their Hearts (100 years of the Choral Union), Tales of Tailless Cats, Mail of Mann (history of the Isle fo Man Post Office), For Those in Peril on the Sea (the first official biography of Sir William Hillary, founder of the RNLI, in collaboration with Gordon Kniveton) and Douglas Centenary (1996).

In recent years he was compiling a history of the local media ’Making of Manxness’, but this and severalher books on various local topics sadly remain unpublished.

Robert was also an avid collector of Manx postcards, books and other local memorabilia and souvenirs.

His wife Linda died in January 2011, when the couple were only four months short of their Golden Wedding anniversary.