Former minister Lord Deedes dies
Bill Deedes, former cabinet minister and an ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, has died at the age of 94.
The Telegraph Media group announced on Friday that the journalist, who has been involved in the profession for over 75 years, had passed away after a short illness.
Lord Deedes excelled as a soldier, politician, war correspondent and a journalist. However, he will probably be best remembered for his regular Notebook column in the Telegraph and as the inspiration behind Evelyn’s Waugh’s famous character, William Boot, a war correspondent in the novel Scoop.
A veteran of the second world war, he was awarded the Military Cross for his services to the country. Lord Deedes also served as an MP for Ashford and then a cabinet minister under Harold Macmillan.
Baroness Thatcher, who made Lord Deedes a life peer in 1986, said: “He managed to appeal to new generations just as effectively as he did to earlier ones.”
Prime minister Gordon Brown also praised the committed Tory activist.
“Few have served journalism and the British public for so long at such a high level of distinction, and with such a popular following,” he said.
Besides his services to politics, the former soldier was also a committed journalist. He worked as the editor of the Telegraph for 14 years before retiring from the position to write for the paper from numerous conflict zones such as Abyssinia, now Ethiopia, and Darfur.
He is survived by a son and two daughters.
