Born in Long Sutton, Lincolnshire, son of Frank and Jessie, Bruce preferred the local library to expand his knowledge, but completed formal education at the Gleed secondary modern school in Spalding. His claim never to have passed anything other than the driving test was belied by the 20 or so books that he produced, the first one being a history of Long Sutton written with his father, the town registrar.
After conscription into the RAF, Bruce joined the sports desk of the Eastern Daily Press and covered the 1966 World Cup final and a decade of the ups and downs of Norwich City, including the day they reached the top flight of English football for the first time in 1972.
Settled in Norfolk, he slipped gratefully into feature writing, bored with the growing cult of football writers who thought that their personal views were more important than reporting fairly and fully on the game. He was given free rein to write about local people, events and places (using the nom de plume of Clement Court) and this fostered his love of Norfolk and of the countryside. With willing friends and his adventurous sons, he began to explore the ancient tracks and was largely responsible for the opening up of the Peddars Way in the 1970s. He wrote the National Trails guide to the Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path, published in 1986.
After retirement in 1993 he wrote for pleasure, but already had one novel, A Skylark Descending, under his belt. He focused on local history, novels with a Norfolk connection and miscellanies, some of which he published himself.
Meticulous in his research, he built up an impressive reference library on East Anglia and especially on its archaeology. In his last weeks, he managed to complete a concise history of Long Sutton and said, regretfully: “I’ve still got so many ideas for books.” Bruce passed away aged 80 in 2016.
Text from Guardian obituary by Cynthia Robinson. Photo Mike Robinson.
