Roy Baker, a former editor of the Exeter Express and Echo and Herald Express, Torquay, has died.

He was 83 and had been suffering from cancer.

Roy’s career in newspapers began when, aged 18, he became a library assistant at a newspaper in Derby before getting a job as a junior reporter in Cheltenham.

At the start of the Second World War he was called-up and, as an experienced athlete and sportsman, was an instructor at the Army Physical Training School before being posted on active service to the Gold Coast, now Ghana.

After six-and-a-half years, Roy returned to Cheltenham before successively becoming chief sub-editor at Grimsby, editor of the Herald of Wales at Swansea, assistant editor of The Evening Sentinel and deputy to the editor of the now defunct Daily Sketch, in Fleet Street.

In 1968 he was asked to join the Exeter Express and Echo, which he edited for 14 years.

Before retiring he took over the Herald Express in Torbay as editor and director, from 1982 to 1984.

Within the last year he had taken on the editorship of a new golf magazine, the County Golfer, with editions for Devon, Somerset, Cornwall and Dorset and had recently fulfilled a lifelong ambition to pilot an aeroplane.

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