Brown leads tributes to Lord Deedes

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the country owed a "huge debt of gratitude" for the contribution the former war correspondent, Daily Telegraph editor and Cabinet minister made to public life.

Tory leader David Cameron described him as a "constant source of both wisdom and entertainment".

And former Premier Baroness Thatcher mourned the peer as a "close friend" for more than half a century, who had carved a "uniquely distinguished career".

Lord Deedes, who preferred to be known as Bill, worked until just weeks before his death at home in Kent, penning his last column for the Telegraph - in which he compared the horrors of Darfur to Nazi Germany - on August 3.

He achieved fame outside Fleet Street as the model for two fictional characters, most notably one of Evelyn Waugh's celebrated creations, the bumbling though resourceful William Boot, in his novel Scoop. The two men reputedly met while covering the war in Abyssinia in the 1930s.

Much later, his close friendship with Sir Denis Thatcher, husband of Baroness Thatcher, inspired the long-running Dear Bill letters in the satirical magazine Private Eye. In 1950 Bill Deedes was elected the Tory MP for Ashford and four years later Winston Churchill gave him his first junior post at the Ministry of Housing.

He was promoted to the Cabinet in 1962 as Minister Without Portfolio in charge of Information Services by the then-Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, after he had sacked seven ministers in a crisis.

Aidan Barclay, chairman of the Telegraph Media Group, said: "Bill Deedes was a giant among men, a towering figure in journalism, an icon in British politics and a humanitarian to his very core. He was part of the fabric of The Telegraph. In his passing we have lost part of ourselves. We will not see his like again. Our thoughts are with his family and his legion of friends."

Lord Deedes retired as editor of the Daily Telegraph in 1986 but was still reporting, often from uncomfortable and dangerous countries, when he was in his 90s.