Britain:Tributes have been paid to the British veteran journalist Lord Deedes, who died last night aged 94.
Known as Bill Deedes during his journalistic career, the former Daily Telegrapheditor and cabinet minister died at his home in Kent after a short illness, the Telegraph Media Group said.
He wrote his last column for the paper, comparing the horrors of Darfur to Nazi Germany, as recently as August 3rd.
Deedes was still reporting in his 90s, often from uncomfortable and dangerous countries.
He also achieved a fame outside Fleet Street as the model for two fictional characters: Boot of the Beast, war correspondent hero of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop; and "Dear Bill", addressee of the "Denis Thatcher" fortnightly letter in Private Eye.
Both fictional characters he inspired had foundations in truth. Bill Deedes, like Boot, was a young war correspondent in Abyssinia in the 1930s, and he was later, like "Bill", Denis Thatcher's golfing partner.
Sir Thatcher, as he was later to become, became a close friend of Deedes.
British prime minister Gordon Brown said Britain owed a "huge debt of gratitude" for Lord Deedes's public service.
"He started writing as a professional journalist more than 76 years ago and few have served journalism and the British people for so long, at such a high level of distinction and with such a popular following," Mr Brown said.
Born on June 1st, 1913, and educated at Harrow, William Francis Deedes joined the national daily newspaper, the Morning Post, at the age of 18.
In 1935, he was sent to Abyssinia to cover the fighting there. His adventures as a fledgling war correspondent later inspired Waugh, who was covering the war for the Daily Mail.
In the second World War, Deedes served in the king's Royal Rifle Corps.
He rejoined the Daily Telegraph, which had embraced the title of the old Morning Postfrom 1937, working on the Peterborough diary column, before joining the Lobby, and flying with Neville Chamberlain to Munich in 1938.
- (PA)