A RENOWNED journalist and author who began his career at The Northern Echo has died.

David Sinclair, 66, went on to enjoy a long and distinguished career in the national press and abroad.

Mr Sinclair died from cancer at his home near Canterbury on Friday.

He was initially brought up in Newcastle and Northumberland, but in the early Fifties, his family moved to Darlington.

Aged 16, he began work as an editorial messenger at The Northern Echo for £4 10s a week.

Despite being told in his interview that editorial messengers did not become journalists, he was soon promoted to assistant sub-editor on the sports desk at evening paper The Northern Despatch, before being made a junior reporter on The Darlington and Stockton Times.

He went on to work as features editor for the Despatch and at the Sunday Sun, in Newcastle, as chief sub-editor, before being recruited by Rupert Murdoch, aged 25, to join the newly relaunched Sun.

He went on to have a 30-year national newspaper career with senior positions at The Sunday Times, the Times, the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Express, where he became deputy editor.

He also spent four years as editor of the Financial Mail on Sunday.

He spent many years working abroad and was a journalist at the Boston Globe, in the US. He was also involved in producing daily newspapers for UN conferences in Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

He wrote a number of books, including biographies of Edgar Allan Poe, the Queen Mother, Lord Snowdon, the Astor family and George V and George VI.

As result of his book Shades of Green, about the decline of the British countryside, he was invited to join the Rural Economy Group of the House of Lords and became a commentator on rural and agricultural policy for the magazine Countryweek.

He is survived by his wife, Amber, and children and grandchildren. Funeral details are yet to be arranged.