Orders, Decorations and Medals

A post-war Civil O.B.E. awarded to A. C. Gilbert, onetime Editor of the Liverpool Post, who ran a full page feature reporting on the discovery of The Beatles - the first publicity ever achieved by the band

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Civil) Officer’s 2nd type breast badge, in its Thomas Fattorini, Birmingham case of issue, together with the recipient’s related warrant, in the name of ‘Alan Charles Gilbert, Esq.’, and dated 16 June 1990, extremely fine £150-200

O.B.E. London Gazette 16 June 1990: ‘For political and public service’.

Alan Charles Gilbert, who was born in May 1909 and served in the Royal Air Force in the 1939-45 War, commenced his career as a journalist on a weekly paper in Lincoln, and was appointed Editor of the Liverpool Post after rising to Chief Sub-Editor on the Derby Evening Telegraph in the 1950s. He remained similarly employed for 20 years, meeting deadlines for constantly changing editions of a 36-page newspaper which ran to half a million copies a day, and it was in that capacity that he ran a full-page feature on a local band that had attracted the attention of his showbiz reporter in the local Cavern Club: “They call themselves a group, whatever that may be,” he said. “And they make a most exciting sound. I can assure you the youngsters will go crazy about it.” Gilbert duly ran the story and the rest, as they say, is history.

A friend of the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, he retired to Devon, where he died in March 2007, aged 98 years.