A former deputy editor of the Evening Post who was awarded an OBE for his services to journalism has died, aged 86.

Kenneth Macmillan worked on papers in Nottingham from the 1950s to the 1980s.

His son John, who is regional chairman of employment tribunals in the East Midlands, said his father would be remembered as an ambassador for quality journalism.

He said: “He had very high standards for his journalists.

“He had a great love for the English language and one of the things he always instilled in my brother and I was the proper use of English, which has stood us both in good stead.”

Kenneth began his journalism career in Norwich, before joining the RAF in 1938. He left due to injury in 1940 and returned to journalism in 1943, working at the Lincolnshire Chronicle.

In 1947 he joined T. Bailey Forman Newspapers – the company that published the Nottingham Evening Post and the Guardian Journal – as a district reporter in Lincoln and later began writing a political column and a weekly essay in the Nottingham Guardian Journal.

In 1966 he was made assistant editor of the paper, before becoming editor three years later.

In 1973 he was appointed deputy editor of the Evening Post and in 1974 received the OBE for his services to journalism. He retired in 1985.

John said: “He was always very courageous in his writings in the paper, and very scathing in his favourite Saturday pieces.”

He was also art editor for the Post for a time – a role which he relished, according to his son.

Kenneth and his family moved to Nottingham in 1954 and always lived in the Woodthorpe and Mapperley Plains area.

His funeral will be at Grantham crematorium on Thursday, July 12.