[4] He attended Bradford Technical College on day release as part of the studies required to qualify for the Certificate of Training for Junior Journalists, which he described as being "taken rather seriously in early post-war Britain".

While a reporter at the Yorkshire Post, Ingham was an active member of the National Union of Journalists and vice-chairman of its Leeds branch.

In the course of his civil service career, he was also press secretary to Barbara Castle, Robert Carr, Maurice Macmillan, Lord Carrington, Eric Varley and Tony Benn.

[citation needed] In those days, Downing Street briefings were "off the record", meaning that information given out by Ingham could be attributed only to "senior government sources".

This blurring of the distinction between his nominally neutral role as a civil servant and a more partisan role as an apologist and promoter of Margaret Thatcher's policies led Christopher Hitchens to characterise Ingham as "a nugatory individual" and to criticise what he saw as the negative consequences of Ingham's time as Thatcher's press secretary: "During his time in office, Fleet Street took several steps towards an American system of Presidentially-managed coverage and sound-bite deference, without acquiring any of the American constitutional protection in return.

[11] In 1989, three years after the Westland helicopter scandal led to the resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, former cabinet minister Leon Brittan revealed in a Channel 4 programme that Ingham was one of two senior Downing Street officials who had approved the leaking of a crucial letter from the Solicitor General Patrick Mayhew, in which he questioned some of the statements that Heseltine had made about the takeover contest of the Westland helicopter company.

Brittan's claim that Ingham and Charles Powell had approved the leak of the letter led to calls from some Labour MPs for there to be a new inquiry into the Westland affair.

[13] Ingham's memoir Kill the Messenger, concerning his time as press secretary, was criticised by Paul Foot, a Marxist journalist, who commented that "... there is no information in this book.

I picked it up eagerly, refusing to believe that someone so close to the top for so long could fail to reveal, even by mistake, a single interesting piece of information" and he was particularly scathing about Ingham's prose style, offering the following quotation from Kill the Messenger as representative of Ingham's use of English: "Like a mighty oak, it took more than one axe to bring Mrs Thatcher down.

[28] On 8 March 1999, Ingham was bound over to keep the peace at Croydon Magistrates' Court after he was accused of causing criminal damage to a Mercedes car owned by Linda Cripps, a neighbour, in Purley, south London.

Speaking to The Guardian, he confirmed that this was what he was told when he and Margaret Thatcher were shown around, although he could not recall if South Yorkshire police's chief constable, Peter Wright, had said it personally.

[34] Hebden Bridge residents launched a campaign against Ingham to remove him as a local newspaper columnist over his continued refusal to apologise for his words in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster.

[37][better source needed] In March 2011, it was reported by The Independent that Policy chief Sir Keith Joseph stated in public the view that Margaret Thatcher's first year in Downing Street had been "wasted".

In his reply, contained in a letter dated 1 December 1980, he said Thatcher was "quite relaxed about it", adding: "I believe she agrees with Sir Keith but for the sake of the government and confidence in it does not say so.

[25] Ingham has been depicted multiple times in film and television, including being portrayed by Glyn Houston in Thatcher: The Final Days (1991),[43] Philip Jackson in Margaret (2009),[44] Kevin McNally in season four of The Crown (2020),[45] and Paul Clayton in both The Queen (2009) and Brian and Maggie (2025).