William Frances Deedes, Baron Deedes of Aldington, KBE, MC, DL, PC, is probably the most revered journalist in Britain. The only person to have been both a cabinet minister, (under Harold MacMillan) and the editor of a national daily newspaper – The Daily Telegraph, 1974-86 – he was also, famously, the alleged model for reporter William Boot, dispatched to the fictional Ishmaelia by Lord Copper in Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel, Scoop. He is rather frail now and a broken femur has terminated his globetrotting. But he is still a vital and alert Telegraph columnist and happy to welcome this interviewer into his comfortable Kent home to talk about journalism then and now, but mostly then.

In a 1994 Telegraph piece headlined: “Fasten your seatbelts, we have encountered a little turbulence” – among those collected in his new book, Words and Deedes – he recalled bumpy rides he has experienced during his long career. When asked about the current turmoil at what is now the Telegraph Media Group, he deflects the question by strolling down a memory lane stretching back more than 75 years: “I remember within six months of my joining the Morning Post in '31 they were in serious financial trouble and a whole lot of people went, including the managing editor who had appointed me. I was too small to be affected. I always regarded that as a bit of luck.”

But what of today? There is a long pause. “In regard to changes going on in modern communications, you can't expect to be static – you've got to move along,” he eventually offers. “We're now in a mechanistic age in which laboursaving is the name of the game. I don't quite know where it's going to end up, but I can see why, in business terms, people want to reduce staff...” But, surely in human terms – many friends and close colleagues have departed under the company's rounds of redundancies – such measures are regrettable? Another pause, and then: “Yes, I always hope in a way that it will gradually take the form of more careful planning... Of course there is a human side and being made redundant anywhere is a very big blow to morale. You suddenly wonder whether you're up to it. And all that human side of it has to be weighed... [But] Journalism has always been a much dicier life than many others. I never make comments about what is happening at the Telegraph – I didn't under [Lord] Hartwell and I don't under the Barclays – but meeting the challenge of constantly changing communications in the world can involve hardship to human beings, no doubt about that. I hate to say this, and I don't want to sound complacent, but some casualties are inevitable. It's a hard thing to say...”

A marvellous newspaper

It has been an admirable and largely successful display of stonewalling by Lord Deedes, an uncharacteristic facet of his normal game which he demonstrates for two stimulating hours, ranging across a myriad of subjects. Evelyn Waugh, for example, whom he first knew in Abyssinia when they were both covering the war there. He recalls once writing in The Spectator that Waugh was a bad journalist, but now believes this was wrong: “He had a wonderful ear for listening to rubbish and his eye was sharp – he was very observant. He was a very good reporter. [But] He held all reporters in contempt. He was very friendly – he taught me how to ride a horse – but he effected to despise all reporters. Scoop embodied his attitude to journalists. They were jokes. Hacks! No, it wasn't snobbery, although I was very glad I'd been to Harrow and he to Lancing.” He smiles wickedly.

We move on to the abdication crisis of 1936, when Deedes believed that the “true blue and loyal” Morning Post should publish the differences between the King and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin after the story appeared abroad. “I've discovered the truth [about how the story did break in Britain] only recently,” he tells me, enthusiastically. With Times editor Geoffrey Dawson controlling the conspiracy of silence in the British press, it was Arthur Mann, editor of the Yorkshire Post, who triggered wide publication here after the Bishop of Bradford urged prayers for the obviously troubled King and added, according to a letter to Deedes from a descendant of the Bishop, that he thought it might be useful for the Monarch to show more awareness of the spiritual side of life. There was no mention of Mrs Wallis Simpson, but despite Dawson's pleas Mann wrote an editorial on the Bishop's comments. “And he sent a copy of his leader to the Press Association, so then the fat was properly in the fire. I can remember there was a subsequent explosion and then, in ten days, it was all over.”

Despite urging his then editor, H A Gwynne, to fight the Dawsonmanaged embargo, Deedes is unconvinced of the validity of publishing many of the revelations about royalty and politicians that appear in the newspapers of today. “I was a lobby correspondent in 1936 and I have to tell you that politicians are no more sinful today than they were then. There were just as many homosexuals and men deceiving their wives and probably even more off-colour relationships. And were the public losers by not knowing about them? Well, were they? No. I suspect the theory that a man who is unfaithful to his wife cannot be trusted in politics. What matters most is the quality of government. There has always been – and very healthy it is – an abrasive relationship between politicians and press... But it should never descend into contempt. It is one thing to be abrasive, critical, cruel if you like, but quite another thing to be contemptuous... There's cynicism everywhere and if we are going to be a nation of character – that's what matters now – cynicism is a big enemy of national self regard, which has slipped a long way.”

I remind him of one particular sentence he wrote: “A journalist can consort with half-a-dozen bimbos, while at the same time ditching one aspiring to be President of the United States or Prime Minister for alleged association, at some time in the past, with a single bimbo.” He looks amazed. “Well, I've certainly consorted with bimbos,” he chortles, recalling a “blissful” week in the early 1930s when covering the Brighton trunk murders. “I discovered the best sources of gossip were the bimbos – the prostitutes – and I remember taking them out to drink and thinking, goodness me, I can even charge the drinks to the Morning Post. No, I think there's a grain of salt to be taken with what I said about bimbos.” Being an “unashamed Royalist” and a great admirer of Diana, Princess of Wales, with whom he campaigned against anti-personnel landmines, he reviles the redtop “hounding” of the Royal Family, especially by Rupert Murdoch's newspapers. “I'm split-minded about Rupert,” he says. “As an editor who struggled through the late 70s and early 80s against what hot metal printers were doing night after night – late newspapers, first editions delayed, a dispute with one union or the other – I regarded Wapping... as a boon. I mean, it was salvation. That's one side of Rupert – an act of genius to install all that stuff without anyone rumbling it. On the other hand, I've always disapproved of the influence of a man who lives in America, not in Britain, and who is openly critical of the Royal Family. I've thought about it a lot, and I've been with some republicans in my time, and I think it's [the monarchy] a good system. So I'm schizo about Rupert. Over Wapping, he's a hero. Over the Royal Family, I don't approve.”

The desire to escape

Lord Black, due for trial on fraud charges in the U.S. next March, emerges in conversation as “a very professional operator” and “a pretty indulgent proprietor” of the Telegraph group. The latter is “not necessarily the right thing to be, but he was, particularly towards me. He interfered no more than Harwood had ever done, other than on American politics. I quite liked him, I'm bound to say, and Barbara [Amiel, Lady Black]”. But it is hard to imagine Lord Deedes not liking anyone about whom he is prepared to converse.

Another F W Deedes column was headed: “In 1931, to be a reporter was heaven”, so when I ask him which of all the pursuits that have crammed full his life – from buying drinks for bimbos in Brighton, to appointments as Minister without Portfolio and Minister for Information, to editing one of the world's great newspapers – he has most enjoyed, I am correctly confident of his reply. “Oh, being a reporter,” he says without hesitation. “In my view, it's the top of the trade. I know the editor is above you, but getting a good story is to me the most satisfactory experience one can undergo. It's better than sex.”

As for regrets, he confesses: “I was never a good editor. I was too complacent. To some extent, I was chief of staff to [chairman and editor-inchief Lord] Hartwell and I accepted that. I'd learned in the Army to submit myself to higher command and that's not what editors should be like. I've always regretted that when, sadly, The Times was out [publication suspended due to union disputes] and our circulation rose to a million-and-a-half, I wasn't more pugnacious about getting the changes we had the opportunity to make. Management begged me not to do it because they said the printers would charge the earth, and I submitted. I should have been strong enough to modernise the paper, as Max [Hastings, his successor] did. I was always too pusillanimous. The truth is that I'm a peace-loving guy and I don't like knocking things about.”

“I've had more luck than I deserve in my life. I've nothing to grumble about at all,” he later observes. As I leave, I congratulate him on his phenomenal memory. “Ah,” he says, tapping his forehead, “I'll give you a bit of advice. As you grow older, make sure the legs go before the marbles.” Bill Deedes is 93.