Journalist who enjoyed success as the editor of two magazines: the Listener and the British edition of Reader's Digest
Russell Twisk, who has died aged 71, edited two very different magazines, the Listener and the British edition of Reader's Digest. That he did both jobs successfully is testament to his sound judgment and journalistic skill, but most importantly perhaps to his gift of getting the best out of other people. He was a modest, kind and generous man, with a keen sense of humour, who was a pleasure to work with, as I and many other former colleagues can attest.
Russell was a surprise choice in 1981 for the editorship of the Listener, the literary and current affairs weekly magazine published by the BBC (it closed in 1991). At the time he was development manager of another BBC publication, Radio Times. The BBC's first choice to succeed Anthony Howard, who had been made deputy editor of the Observer, was the Guardian journalist Richard Gott, but the idea was opposed by MI5, which vetted high-level BBC appointments at the time, because of his leftwing political views.
However, Russell confounded the sceptics and proved a worthy successor to Howard. As John Naughton, the magazine's former television critic, wrote in a tribute on his blog: "He turned out to be a brilliant editor, possibly because – unlike many editors – he did not believe that he could write better than any of the halfwits he employed. He saw his role as partconductor, partimpresario, and he was terrific at coaxing the best out of his contributors." Among his discoveries was Lynne Truss, now a bestselling author.
In 1988, he was appointed editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest's British edition, a quantum leap in terms of magazine circulation: the Digest, selling 1.5m copies a month, was Britain's bestselling magazine, and continued to be so under Russell, who, however, subtly softened its ultra-conservative political stance and tried to broaden its appeal to a (relatively) younger audience.
He introduced a more collegial style than his long-serving predecessor Michael Randolph. But like Randolph he believed that the magazine should contain a higher proportion of British content than the editors of the flagship American edition sometimes wanted, although they valued his experience and enjoyed his laid-back style. His long experience of coping with the bureaucracy of the BBC at Radio Times and the Listener stood him in good stead in fighting his own corner. Many of the articles he commissioned were picked up or adapted by other editions of the magazine around the world.
He was an intuitive rather than an intellectual editor. His interest could be pricked by a chance aside heard at a social gathering or a small item in a local paper, and might end up as a piece on a family bereaved in the troubles of Northern Ireland or a young civil war victim with a bullet in her head in Nigeria who was treated by a hospital in Britain. His ideas for commissioning opinion polls often garnered wide publicity by touching on issues most likely to concern his readers: crime and punishment, education, religion and family.
Another fruitful source of articles were the regular lunches he hosted at the magazine's Curzon Street office for the great and the good, which rarely failed to result in a cover story "ghosted" in the Digest's inimitable style. A gifted writer himself, Russell enjoyed interviewing leading figures.
One such encounter, with the incoming archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in 1991, caused a furore even before Carey had assumed office. When Russell asked him to describe the Church of England as a person, Carey replied: "As an elderly lady who mutters away herself in a corner, ignored most of the time." Although the remark dogged Carey's career (and went into The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations), he stood by it and by his friendship with Russell, with whom he later toured the Holy Land.
Russell was born in London, of a Dutch father and English mother. He was educated at the Salesian college, Farnborough. At 19 he contracted TB and spent seven months in hospital. There he acquired a love of reading and of writing, knocking out short stories on a portable typewriter. He started in journalism as deputy editor of Golf Illustrated (golf and horse racing were lifelong interests), went freelance, and joined Radio Times in 1966, rising to deputy editor in 1971. He was also for many years radio critic of the Observer. He retired from Reader's Digest in 2002.
He had a strong sense of public duty. He was a governor of the London College of Printing, president of the British Society of Magazine Editors in 1990 and active in other organisations such as the Pilgrims, the Media Society and Christian Responsibility in Public Affairs.
He had been ill since suffering a stroke last autumn. Russell is survived by his wife, Ellen, whom he married in 1965; two daughters, Eloise and Alissa; and five grandchildren.
• Russell Godfrey Twisk, journalist and editor, born 24 August 1941; died 4 August 2013