[1] His father died from polio when Preston was a child, and he subsequently caught the disease; he spent 18 months in and out of hospital, including time in an iron lung.
[2] He was educated at Loughborough Grammar School and St John's College, Oxford, where he edited the student paper Cherwell.
[1] He reported on Conservative MPs, including the perjurious Jonathan Aitken and the cash-for-questions affair involving Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith.
Preston was also editor when The Guardian was forced to hand over leaked government documents, which were then traced to a Foreign Office copier, leading to Sarah Tisdall, who was subsequently imprisoned under the Official Secrets Act 1911.
[6] He had strong opinions on Brexit and the balance of the BBC and continued to take to social media to discuss this after his retirement.