Dear Bill

Stephen Robinson (Little, Brown, £20)

In his 94 years, Bill Deedes did indeed enjoy several remarkable lives, first as a young reporter for the Morning Post. Then he became a soldier, an MP, a Cabinet minister, editor of The Daily Telegraph, and finally a reporter again, working abroad alongside Princess Diana as she campaigned against landmines.

This biography is authorised and Robinson, a former Telegraph foreign editor, had access to Deedes's diaries, and plenty of time to interview his subject during his later years.

Robinson highlights clearly the defining moments in his colleague's life, but provides little comment himself, allowing readers to make up their own mind about Deedes's strengths and shortcomings. Early chapters on his days as a cub reporter at the Post, and his astonishing posting to Abyssinia aged 22, alongside Evelyn Waugh, are colourful and atmospheric.

Robinson places great significance on a canal ambush during Deedes's wartime service with the King's Royal Rifle Corps, when 22 men were killed outright. The biographer says: "It does not seem fanciful to conclude that some part of his limited emotional capacity died along with his men that dreadul April day, just a month before the German surrender."

Some reviewers have criticised Robinson for overstating Deedes's distant relationship with his wife and children, but the author allows the children to speak for themselves and never attacks Deedes directly. If the story stalls at all, it is during the journalist's time as a Tory politician, including his role as ineffectual spin doctor for Harold Macmillan, failing to limit the damage caused by the Profumo scandal.

The story takes off when, in 1986, at 72, Deedes steps down as editor and goes back on the road, sometimes with young reporter Victoria Combe as his travelling companion. There is a lovely moment when the press pack in Luanda stop fiddling with their satellite phones to listen to Deedes dictating his story to copytakers.

He didn't quite die with his boots on, but he was still writing a column at the time of his death, and it will be hard to match his longevity as a reporter. Robinson's portrait of "dear Bill" is always revealing, but somehow never intimate, because Deedes consistently refused to let his guard down and reveal his true emotions.