A FORMER managing director of The Northern Echo and High Sheriff of County Durham died on Monday, a month after his 99th birthday.

In 1950, Shannan Stevenson took on the position at The Great Daily of the North, and steered it through the print strike of 1959 against fierce union opposition.

Following the dispute, it was his proud boast that the paper had not lost a single issue since its 1870 launch.

Mr Stevenson, whose time at the helm saw the charismatic Harold Evans appointed as editor in 1961 taking the paper to record circulation levels, also served on the Newspaper Society's council for 17 years and was made president in 1964.

Born in Tynemouth, the son of north country newspaper proprietor Ronald Cochran Stevenson, his newspaper heritage stretched back to 1849, when his great grandfather had founded the Shields Gazette, in South Shields.

The family company, The Northern Press Ltd, bought or founded other newspapers in Northumberland and was itself taken over by the Westminster Press group, of which he later became a director.

Under this new ownership, Mr Stevenson became managing director of The Northern Press.

However, naval life was also in his blood, his father having been a founder of the Tyne Division Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and he went to the Royal Naval Colleges of Osborne and Dartmouth.

There, he was a contemporary of Prince George, fourth son of George V and Duke of Kent, and the pair became friends as shipmates aboard the HMS Bee, to which Mr Stevenson was posted as a 22-year-old lieutenant.

On this duty with that gunboat on the China station, he met his wife, Daphne among the British evacuees the ship rescued in January 1927.

Later that year, he returned to England, joining the family's newspaper business, but was recalled to active duty when war broke out.

One of his last acts before leaving for war was to prepare his newspaper plants on Tyneside for bombing raids, and this proved successful as direct hits on the South Shields plant and the printing works in North Shields in 1941 failed to stop a single issue.

He retired at the end of the Second World War with the rank of commander.

In 1963 Mr Stevenson served as High Sheriff of County Durham, and the following year, he and his wife moved to Bolton Old Hall in North Yorkshire.

He died at Nightingale Hall Nursing Home and a funeral service is planned for St Mary's church, Bolton-on-Swale, at 2.30pm on Thursday, April 25.