Donald Zec

Life and career

His grandfather was a Jewish refugee from Odessa, in Ukraine. His father Simon Zecanovsky settled in London, shortened the family name to Zec, and raised nine daughters and two sons.

Zec's career in journalism began in 1938 with a three-day trial at the Daily Mirror. Interviewed by Michael Freedland in 2009, he recalled: "I was so embarrassingly bad that no one had the courage to tell me, so I stayed for 40 years." During the war, he served in the London Irish Rifles, returning to the Daily Mirror as a crime reporter. On one occasion, he interviewed the acid-bath murderer John George Haigh in the Onslow Court Hotel. He followed this post by becoming the paper's Royal correspondent, "which I thought was a natural progression", he told Freedland.

Later, he became a journalist writing about film. In the course of his work he interviewed and wrote about many celebrities from the entertainment industry, including Humphrey Bogart, Brigitte Bardot, David Niven, Ingrid Bergman, The Beatles, and Marilyn Monroe.

In October 1967 he won a National Press Award as Descriptive Writer of the year, the citation spoke of his "bland outrageousness and a deadly certainty of aim". Extending his range, he interviewed major political figures such as a former Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd, the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, the (then) leader of the Opposition Margaret Thatcher, Lord Mountbatten of Burma and the former Californian Governor Ronald Reagan in 1967, commenting: "it is a whimsical if not uneasy thought that an ex-movie star of many films that escape instant recollection could one day become President of the United States of America". In 1970 Zec was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Journalism.

The many books Donald Zec has written include biographies of the Queen Mother, Sophia Loren, Barbra Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor and Lee Marvin. Zec's biography of his brother, the political cartoonist Philip Zec, entitled Don't Lose It Again! The Life and Wartime Cartoons of Philip Zec, was published in 2005.

He was married for 66 years. After his wife died in 2006 he took up painting, mainly with acrylic paint. In October 2012 he won The Oldie magazine's inaugural British Artists Award (OBA) for artists over the age of 60. A year later his portrait of his late paternal grandfather (entitled "My Grandfather, the Pious Patriarch") was presented at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, jointly winning the Hugh Casson Prize for Drawing.

Donald Zec now lives in Holland Park, London.