Alastair Hetherington

Though his myopia initially kept him from duty in a combat regiment, eventually he joined the Royal Armoured Corps and subsequently transferred to the Northamptonshire Yeomanry.

He later took part in the relief of Antwerp and ended his army career as a major in the Intelligence Corps, during which time he wrote a Military Geography of Schleswig-Holstein.

Based on three months as a trainee sub-editor for the Glasgow Herald, Hetherington was offered a posting after his demobilisation as managing editor of Die Welt, the first German national newspaper to be produced in the British zone after the war.

The experience confirmed his decision to pursue a career in journalism rather than academia, and he rejoined the Glasgow Herald a year later as a sub-editor and writer of articles on defence matters.

[3] Suez soon proved to be only the first of many causes Hetherington took up, as he used as his position to campaign for social justice, alleviating the poverty gap between northern and southern England, and nuclear disarmament.

He was present at the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), attending preliminary meetings at the house of Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, with Bertrand Russell and Sir Bernard Lovell, but he did not join or support the organisation.

As The Guardian's immediate prospects slowly improved, Hetherington focused on the task on turning the paper into one capable of competing on a national level.

Though initially against America's involvement in Vietnam, after meeting with American military commanders on a trip to Saigon he changed the paper's stance opposing the conflict, a move that generated much internal staff dissent.

He did much to invigorate programme output, and appointed a number of specialist news correspondents, including Helen Liddell and Chris Baur, to try to increase Scotland's presence on the BBC networks.

[3] In 1989 Hetherington retired to the Isle of Arran, where he wrote and worked on projects before he was forced to give up such activities due to the onset of Alzheimer's disease in the mid-1990s.