Charles Wheeler, 'the reporter's reporter', dies aged 85

Charles Wheeler was born in 1923, only a year after the BBC itself. For many the veteran reporter, who died yesterday from lung cancer, aged 85, will always personify the corporation at its best - authoritative, with unquestionable integrity and at times inconveniently independent of mind. Tributes swelled to a man once described as "the reporter's reporter", whose BBC career began in 1947 as a subeditor on the Latin American service and who was still working, on a Radio 4 documentary about the Dalai Lama, almost until the time of his death. Mark Thompson, the BBC's director-general, said Wheeler was "simply a legend ... he is utterly irreplaceable." John Humphrys called him "just a brilliant correspondent. We shall never have a better one. It was his huge knowledge, his extraordinary intelligence. He could cut through any... [read full story]