An award-winning former weekly newspaper editor who took early retirement last year to run an antique toy business has died suddenly aged 57.

George Robinson, former editor of the Worksop Guardian, passed away at Bassetlaw Hospital on Boxing Day after being taken ill a few hours earlier.

Regarded by former colleagues as a ‘larger than  life’ character, George spent 37 years working for newspapers in the East Midlands and edited the Johnston Press-owned Guardian from 1992 until June 2010.

Under his editorship, the Guardian won several industry awards including best editorial team at the O2 Media Awards in 2009 for its coverage of the Neil Entwistle murder trial the previous year.

George, who lived in the village of Walesby, North Nottinghamshire, had been running an antique toy business with his wife Karen, also a former journalist, since  his retirement

He and Karen had already been trading in diecast models of cars and lorries for a decade, setting up their own online store called George’s Good Stuff.

He said at the time of his retirement:  “I’m not one for hanging around the garden all my life and I never thought I would be slogging it out as an editor until I was 65. I always wanted to take one last chance to do something else.”

Before taking on the Worksop Guardian editorship, George had edited the Mansfield and Ashfield Observer and was also a former news editor of the Mansfield Chad, the paper where he began his career in 1973.