Lord Deedes: A personal tribute to the writer, thinker and drinker

I first came across Bill Deedes as a member of Harold Macmillan's Government. He was in charge of press relations and had the title of minister without portfolio from 1962. He was the first official spin doctor, though others (notably Charles Hill, the "Radio Doctor") had done the job informally before him.

Deedes was never completely happy in his new post. Westminster journalists tended to expect quick, definite answers to specific questions: Bill preferred to circle a subject tentatively. The great theme of the age was "modernisation", which was exactly the same cry 35 years later on.

His own discursive methods suited me admirably. If you allowed him to go on, he would always come up with some fresh observation.

For instance, before the Second World War he had reported the war in Abyssinia. It was not generally known at the time – for his elevation to the status of national "character" came later – that he had been the model for William Boot in Evelyn Waugh's Fleet Street novel Scoop.

He told me that, far from being an incompetent correspondent, Waugh was thoroughly professional. And he was practical too. He could ride a horse, put up a tent, fire a gun. Deedes said modestly that it was Waugh who was the teacher, Deedes the pupil.

It was not Deedes's fault that Macmillan's regime collapsed as it did. He was, however, a member of the court-martial which had summoned John Profumo in the middle of the night to question him about whether he had experienced sexual relations with Christine Keeler. Profumo said no.

Subsequently Macmillan resigned at the beginning of the party conference at Blackpool in 1963. Deedes dealt with the press as well as anyone could have done in the circumstances. Within a couple of weeks, Lord Home was Prime Minister. Deedes carried on as a minister until the change of government under Harold Wilson, who had attacked Deedes's post as a misuse of public money. He continued as MP for Ashford until 1974.

At the same time, he went back to his old job at The Daily Telegraph. When we met again soon afterwards, in the Commons, he was dressed in the old ministerial rig-out of black coat and striped trousers. When he had worked as a political correspondent for the Morning Post, before the war, he had been required to turn up for work in this formal attire every day.

I asked him what he was doing at the Telegraph. He said he was on the Peterborough column (the paper's sedate gossip column, now renamed). But he was the number two, not the top man. Bill was completely without "side" of any kind where his own career was concerned.

He always preferred to be charitable about colleagues. He would say: "I don't always see eye to eye with Enoch" – or Iain, Reggie or whoever it happened to be – "but he has a delightful wife. Absolute charmer. I'm devoted to her."

After he became editor of the Telegraph in 1974, his tendency to be friendly with everybody became, if anything, even more pronounced. His disposition, which he was to share with Tony Blair, even if it was in a different fashion, was to avoid conflict if it could possibly be avoided. Accordingly, he would be inclined to agree with those who did not really agree with him at all.

The structure of the paper for the bulk of his 12 years as editor made the exercise easier. At the top was Michael Berry, who then became Lord Hartwell. Deedes referred to him without irony as "the chief proprietor". Hartwell was more interested in news than he was in comment or opinion.

Deedes controlled the leader column, the parliamentary sketch and other political contributions. But Deedes was an old-fashioned Tory of liberal instincts. The paper's political position derived largely from somebody else: from the deputy editor, the late Colin Welch. Early on, in the 1970s, the Telegraph embraced monetarism, supported deregulation and anticipated Margaret Thatcher.

He would often join his gifted but argumentative staff at the bar of the King & Keys in Fleet Street, a veritable hell-hole, where fights were not uncommon. Whereas the journalists of, say, The Guardian would lead lives of blameless domesticity, the staff of the Telegraph tended to have more complicated arrangements. This was paradoxical, if a paradox it was.

Over this Hogarthian scene, Deedes would preside with the greatest affability. He would have a half-pint of beer, perhaps several, or a glass or two of whisky. Sometimes he smoked cigarettes and sometimes a pipe. He remained fit because he was naturally active, with golf (accompanied by his friend Denis Thatcher, of "Dear Bill" fame) as a recreation, though never an obsession.

I once asked him why so many professional cricketers played golf. "Perfectly simple," he said. "It's a great luxury to be able to hit a stationary ball if you have to hit a moving ball in your normal job." Whenever possible, he used public transport. From Fleet Street he would take a bus to the Trafalgar Square end of the Strand, where he would entertain his guest at a modest Italian restaurant.

Like William Whitelaw, he confused his metaphors. Deedesisms were possibly even more surreal than Willieisms. Thus: "Say what you like about Peter Carrington [Mrs Thatcher's recently appointed Foreign Secretary], he weighs a lot of ice." Or: "You can't make an omelette without frying eggs." And when Charles Moore left the paper to edit The Spectator, he advised: "Good luck, Charles, whatever you do, don't burn your boots." I never discovered whether Deedes used to do this deliberately.

On only one occasion did I hear him speak sharply. It was about another journalist, a young man who had earlier given Deedes a lengthy discourse on Winston Churchill's strategy in the war and who had no experience whatever of military matters. "I knew Winston," Deedes explained, "because I was in the House after the war. And I was in the show before that. So I don't need any lectures from that young man." Deedes never mentioned his Military Cross. His other characteristic was his spirit of public obligation. I once served with him on a committee of the organisation Justice. Its purpose was to examine the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into United Kingdom law. Many years later this was done, by a Labour government, to the great annoyance of The Sun, the Daily Mail and, sometimes, of the Labour Government as well.

Deedes was not a lawyer – that was one of his merits – but he had been a minister at the Home Office before becoming minister without portfolio and he had interested himself in Home Office affairs throughout his career at Westminster. He might have been one of our better Home Secretaries, along with RA Butler and Roy Jenkins. What impressed me, during my own unlikely stint of committee-sitting, was his assiduity, his willingness to reach agreement and, not least, his absence of any wish to make party points.

His work on landmines with Diana, Princess of Wales, was much better known, for perfectly understandable reasons. No one could have blamed him if he had confined himself to the golf course and to the occasional article. But he carried on working to the end. He was the head of our profession.

The Deedes decades: War hero, editor, minister, friend

Bill Deedes was born in 1913, educated at Harrow, and joined the 'Morning Post' in 1931. He went with Evelyn Waugh to Abyssinia in 1935 and two years later became a 'Telegraph' reporter when it absorbed the 'Post'. He served with the King's Royal Rifles in the Second World War, was awarded the Military Cross, and, in 1950, won Ashford for the Tories. He served as a minister and became editor of the 'Telegraph' in 1974, leaving the job when Conrad Black took over. He resumed reporting and column writing until his death, displaying instincts more liberal and open-minded than those of the newspaper he inhabited and loved all his working life.

1930s

In March 1939, Deedes reported on babies being fitted for their gas masks

Winifred Margaret Baker, aged three weeks, and James Pochetty, aged eight weeks, performed their first acts of National Service yesterday by spending ten minutes inside the Government's new gas helmets for babies. Winifred kicked and cried half-heartedly for a few seconds after the hood had been belted round her waist... James did not cry at all. In a very few seconds he grew tired of staring back at reporters and went to sleep.

1940s

In 1949, Deedes returned to the Normandy he had last seen in 1944

To visit Normandy again, five years after it became a battlefield, is to see more clearly than most of us did at the time the cost of liberation... ragged lines of wrecked villas, houses with sightless windows and battered defences stand apparently untouched since the day they were hit. Inside the Normandy bridgehead the achievements of four and a half years only emphasise the immensity of the task ahead.

1950s

Deedes in 1959, taking his usual understanding line on the Youth of the Day

We have the flick knife but not yet, I think, marijuana or the "zip" gun... Were I a dimwit in school to-day I would certainly have a big pocket knife – not a flick knife, of course – but sharper and shinier than anyone else's. No childish emotion runs deeper than a sense of inferiority to all about you. Has anyone yet found a Teddy Boy in the Sixth Form?

1960s

In 1960, Deedes, never a hang 'em and flog 'em Tory, visited a Kent detention centre for young offenders

The boys put on an average of 20lb in three months. They have to stop smoking... get four excellent square meals a day, and go through the kind of physical routine for which the affluent and obese gladly pay a clinic 40 guineas a week. On arrival the youth... finds himself in the solitary block, facing an hygienic but chilling cell with a table, chair and chamber pot. He is told to go in and write a letter to his mother.

1970s

In April 1970, Deedes was bringing a cool head to the touchy subject of immigration

It is instructive in some cities where Asians have settled to discover the marked reluctance of Asian parents to release their young – girls in particular – from the tight family circle for the social delights of our present day society. Ought we to prod them into assimilation? What right have we to do so?

1980s

In July 1986, ever the royalist, Deedes wrote on the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson

The first royal wedding within my experience was that of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, George and Marina, in 1934. My portion was to travel on their train from London to Birmingham. "You are to report rejoicing along the way." The recollection is relevant. On this day when Andrew weds Sarah... let there be rejoicing all along the way.

1990s

April 1999, and Deedes went to Kosovo, where he saw things that shocked even a hardened old soldier

Not even during the Second World War did I witness a scene of human anguish comparable to what I saw at Blace... There are still more than 50,000 refugees waiting in chaos and without shelter... "They are throwing the dead bodies in the river," cried one man and, although I disbelieved him, the scene is calculated to make it seem probable.

2000s

In June 2003, he wrote about Denis Thatcher when his great friend died

When we were on golfing holidays and slightly boring people asked for his autograph, he smiled upon them and signed their books because it was furthering the interests of "the blessed Margaret". ... [Denis] earned his keep. At one banquet where he sat next to the president's wife and found neither spoke the other's language, they conversed by drawing little pictures on the table cloth.