Former Optician editor Philip Mullins dies, 88

Former Optician editor Philip Mullins has died following a short illness at the age of 88.

Fondly remembered as one of a kind, Mullins oversaw one of the most successful eras in Optician’s history. He joined in the early 1970s under Eric Crundle and served as editor between 1975 and 1993.

He was born in New Zealand in 1928 and moved to England in 1948, working his passage by ship via the Panama Canal. His destination was St Hugh’s Charterhouse Parkminster in West Sussex. This is a Carthusian monastery where he was ordained as a monk and lived an ascetic life of prayer and silence for 17 years. In 1965 he became a journalist making the move to Optician some years later. It was at this time he also met his wife, Ursula, with whom he had four children.