Patric Walker

Patric Walker was born on 25 September 1931 in Hackensack, New Jersey, United States to British parents, who had emigrated from Yorkshire, England.[3] The family returned to Yorkshire when Walker was 4, settling in Whitby.[1] Walker's mother died when he was 7, an event about which he later said "nothing could ever happen to me in life that would be greater than that loss".[1] His father married again and had three children with his second wife.[4] Walker attended Whitby Grammar School, before performing national service with the Royal Air Force, where he was posted to India and Pakistan and learned accountancy.[1][3]

Walker moved to London and tried various careers, including accountancy, a short spell at ICI, running a club in Pimlico, being a waiter and bartender and a property developer, the lattermost after being gifted winnings his aunt made on a sweepstake.[4][5] It was only after meeting American astrologer Helene Hoskins (who would later write as Celeste in Harpers & Queen) at a dinner party around the end of the 1950s/start of the 1960s that Walker turned to astrology, with Hoskins enlisting Walker as her apprentice.[1][5] Walker subsequently began writing an astrology column under the name Novalis for glossy women's magazine Nova on its launch in March 1965 after a recommendation from Hoskins, who would later say of Walker "I knew [he] would be good, but not this good".[1][3][6][7]

In 1974 Walker took over Hoskins' 'Celeste' column in Harpers & Queen before moving to The Daily Mirror then, in 1976, to Associated Newspapers, for whom he wrote columns in the Evening Standard and The Mail on Sunday as Celeste, using his own name from 1991.[1][3] He produced four astrology supplements a year for The Mail on Sunday, with the release of each supplement raising the paper's circulation by a quarter of a million copies for the issue they were contained in,[3] before leaving in 1992 to be replaced by Jonathan Cainer.[8] He was reported to have earned over £500,000 for his Evening Standard column.[8] A daily column written by Walker appeared in over 100 American and Canadian newspapers, including The New York Times, with a weekly column appearing in the TV Guide and a monthly column in Mirabella magazine.[3] Walker's columns were also syndicated in South America, the Middle East and Asia and he was responsible for a number of astrological phone-lines, which users could ring at the rate of 49p per minute,[2][5] as well as writing The Patric Walker Birthday Book for children, with profits going to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.[4] His readership was estimated to be one billion worldwide.[2] Walker acted as a mentor to Shelley von Strunckel, who covered for Walker when he fell ill in 1991 and took over the astrology column in Walker's old newspaper, the Evening Standard, in December 1995.[9][2]

Writing for The New York Times, William Grimes described Walker's horoscope columns as having "a literary sense and an urbane outlook on life rare for the genre".[3] He has also been described as "the world's greatest astrologer"[1] and, by Justine Picardie writing for The Independent, as "the Henry James of horoscope writers [...] the man who'd made the trade respectable".[2] Walker denied having any special astrological abilities, stating that "even if one has them, I don't think it's something one should be aware of. Whatever these personal gifts are, they are not to be exploited or boasted about".[1][10]

Walker was active in the London social scene in the 1970s, wearing expensive clothes and jewellery and counting Elton John and The Beatles, who he became acquainted with when they were beginning their careers in the early 1960s, as friends.[1][5] He grew tired of partying and fame however, stating that it was "extremely hard to be perceived as someone who is always right [...] I was expected to be infallible, and it made me start drinking", and moved to Lindos on the Greek island of Rhodes in 1982 after falling in love with the village during a visit in 1979.[1][5] Walker spent much of the year in Lindos, where he wrote his astrology columns, and also maintained a property in London.[5][11] As part of his 1992 television travel show, Pole to Pole, Michael Palin visited Walker at his Lindos home.[12]

Because the hospital his mother attended in Hackensack did not record the time of his birth, Walker was unable to produce his own horoscope.[3]

Walker died of food poisoning in his London apartment on 8 October 1995.[11] His two sisters and his brother were present at his death.[5] Walker remained a bachelor and was not survived by any children.[3][5]