Tony Hancox was in 1964 first winner of the Hannen Swaffer Provincial Journalist of the Year Award for graphic, in-depth reports on the agony of the Aberfan pit mound disaster.

From the time he joined the Leamington Morning News from school in 1941 he developed his technique for descriptive and balanced reporting. Towards the end of an illustrious career he became a Government information officer, highlighting with published articles business-boosting services linked to activities at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre.

Drafted aged 18 into the Royal Navy in 1944, he was a year later deployed into Hiroshima soon after the dropping of the atomic bomb, to help send out reports of devastation that led to the end of the war against Japan.

His widow, Pat, whom he married in 1971, still keeps fragments of grotesquely re-set glass melted by the furnace heat of the blast, that her husband brought back from that mission.

Having returned post-war to his reporting job in Leamington, Mr Hancox was briefly acting editor of the Jersey Morning News in the Channel Islands before joining in 1950 the Birmingham Gazette to become chief reporter and later features writer,

On the Gazette's merger with the Birmingham Post he became Sunday Mercury news editor before being appointed staff features writer on the big circulation national weekly magazine, John Bull, then pre-eminent in photo journalism. He used to say that for any article in the magazine one needed to gather, research, test and prove two dozen revealing facts.

He rejoined the Mercury in 1958, becoming chief features writer during which period he made a long-term study of the unsolved Cotswold "witchcraft murders" and interviewed German U-boat commanders for a book on the torpedo threat that faced shipping on the east coast of America in World War II.

Send us your views on this story by clicking here. Your opinions could be used on this website or in the Courier or Weekly News

Chris Watkins, whose 18 years as Mercury news editor included seven years working alongside Hancox, said: "He was punctilious and assiduously strident in his passion to get to the truth of any argument.

"Readers of the Sunday Mercury were well served by Tony Hancox who illuminated so many subjects with an insight that was quite exceptional. He could be assertive and abrasive at times, but was a person of complete competence."

After joining the Government Information Service in Birmingham in 1971, Mr Hancox transferred to the Government Services Centre set up at the NEC in preparation for its opening in 1976, where he was charged with supporting Britain's interests by featuring the services available to UK and overseas business.

A GSC colleague until Mr Hancox switched to freelance writing in 1981 said: "Tony was the living example of the journalistic adage that if in doubt, you find out. He was so meticulous, so thorough, a dream to work with, a lovely man."

The funeral is at Mid Warwickshire Crematorium South Chapel, Oakley Wood, near Wellesbourne, at 2.15 pm on Tuesday 31 July. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made via funeral directors John Taylor of Kenilworth, by cheque payable to Castle Ward Patients' Fund at Warwick Hospital or Myton Hamlet Hospice, Warwick.