Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham, who started out in the regional press, has died aged 90.

Tributes have been paid to Sir Bernard, who began his career on the Hebden Bridge Times as a teenager.

In more recent times he had served as a columnist for the Yorkshire Post, where he had previously worked as a reporter, and was still filing columns for the Leeds-based daily in recent weeks.

Sir Bernard achieved national prominence as Mrs Thatcher’s press secretary in Downing Street between 1979 and 1990.

His family have described him as “a journalist to his bones” who began his reporting career aged 16 on his hometown paper.

His son John said: “To the wider world he is known as Margaret Thatcher’s chief press secretary, a formidable operator in the political and Whitehall jungles.

“But to me he was my dad – and a great dad at that. He was a fellow football fan and an adoring grandfather and great-grandfather.

“My family will miss him greatly.”

Sir Bernard worked as a reporter for both the Yorkshire Post and the Yorkshire Evening Post, serving as the former’s Labour correspondent between 1952 and 1961.

He went from the Post to Fleet Street with The Guardian before becoming a Government press officer, later working for Mrs Thatcher for all bar the first few weeks of her premiership.

In his diaries, published in 2019, Sir Bernard claimed he was repeatedly asked about the possibility of taking over as editor at the Yorkshire Post in 1989.

Sir Bernard was married for 60 years to Nancy, a former policewoman, who died in 2017.

He is survived by son John, two grandchildren and a great-grandchild.