Michael Wynn Jones, the businessman, magazine journalist and author who, with his wife, the cookery writer Delia Smith, saved Norwich City football club, has died aged 85. To many fans he was the man who saved the club, but to most others he was the husband of Delia Smith. He was behind much of her success, typing up her articles, trying her recipes and discreetly guiding her career for more than 50 years.
Career and marriage
Wynn Jones was deputy editor of the Daily Mirror's short-lived midweek colour supplement in 1969 when Smith was recommended by literary agent Deborah Owen to the paper's editor Mike Molloy as a possible cookery writer. She had never written for newspapers and it took several goes but, directed by Wynn Jones, she soon got the hang of it, her first recipes being for kipper pate, beef in beer and cheesecake. She cooked the meal for him and two years later they were married; it was the precursor to millions of sales of easy-to-follow recipe books.
“She could not have done it without Michael,” the Daily Mail noted in a profile in 1995. “He has tasted every meal she has ever prepared, checked every word she has ever written, even typed all her stuff out for her.” Wynn Jones modestly agreed, telling the BBC in 2014: “All Delia's books are written in longhand and I was the only person who could read her writing, so I'd type them.”
Early life and education
He was born in south Wales, the son of an Anglican curate, the Rev Edward Wynn Jones, and his wife, Dilys, a school teacher. The family moved to Norfolk when Michael was 12 after his father became vicar of Tivetshall and Redenhall with Harleston and, two years later, he accompanied his football-mad father to watch a Norwich City match, the beginning of a lifelong devotion.
Michael was educated at Lancing college, in West Sussex, and studied classics at Worcester College, Oxford, where he wrote theatre reviews for Cherwell, the student newspaper. In the mid-60s he became features editor of Nova magazine before being recruited to the Daily Mirror in 1969. His redundancy payoff when the magazine folded enabled him and his wife to move to a thatched cottage near Stowmarket in Suffolk, where they lived for the rest of their married lives.
Later career and Norwich City
After the Mirror, Wynn Jones became deputy editor of the Spectator magazine, credited with livening up the weekly by introducing columns which still survive, such as Good Life and City Life, but his tenure ended after he allowed film-maker Tony Palmer to write a column in 1971 speculating on the sex life of the 21-year-old Princess Anne. The article caused a row, and the resignation of the magazine's literary editor Maurice Cowling. When Wynn Jones returned from holiday, the editor, George Gale, sacked him.
By then Delia had published her first book, How to Cheat at Cooking, and her writing and broadcasting career was taking off. In 1993 the couple launched their own publishing company, New Crane, and won the contract to produce the Sainsbury's supermarket house magazine, edited by Wynn Jones and including Delia's recipes as well as lifestyle features. When one of her recipes required shallots, sales of the vegetable rose 2,000%, and the magazine would eventually claim 350,000 readers. The couple sold New Crane in 2005 for £13.6m.
They were both long-term supporters of Norwich City football club – Delia inherited Michael's father's season ticket after his death in 1988 – and joined the board in 1996, becoming majority shareholders in 1998. Their support was genuine, not commercial, and included loaning the club money to ease its precarious finances as it yo-yoed between promotion and relegation. There was an £8m bailout in 1996 and a further loan of £2m 12 years later. “There's no question, not in a million years, that we want or expect to make money out of this,” Delia told the Sun in 2005.
Not only was the club's catering improved and they also invested in the nearby supporters' pub, the Lion and Castle, but the couple would chat amiably to other fans at matches. They stepped down as directors only in 2024, when control of the club passed to the Milwaukee brewer Mark Attanasio, but were made honorary life presidents and retained a 10% holding.
Books and legacy
Wynn Jones wrote a number of popular books through the 1970s, featuring his enthusiasm for newspapers. There was a Cartoon History of Britain in 1971, followed by A Newspaper History of the World (1974), and in 1976 Deadline Disaster, featuring front pages reporting catastrophes, and The World 100 Years Ago. The People's Jubilee came in 1977 to coincide with Queen Elizabeth II's silver anniversary and a biography of Dickens's illustrator George Cruickshank was published in 1978.
Wynn Jones is survived by his wife. Edward Michael Spencer Wynn Jones, journalist and writer, born 17 September 1941; died 28 September 2026.
