Newspaperman Percy Roberts, a former reporter at The Argus who rose to become chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers, has died.

Mr Roberts, 82, died while on holiday in Africa where he had spent some of his working life.

He started his career on The Argus and its sister paper the Sussex Daily News in the Thirties after attending the Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School.

During the Second World War, he served in France and the Middle East with the Sussex Yeomanry.

He later worked for the Egyptian Mail in Cairo and the Mid-East Mail in Palestine before returning to England to work at the Sussex Daily News and the Liverpool Daily Post.

He became editor of the Nigerian Citizen, the Nigerian Daily Times and Mirror Group Newspapers in the Caribbean.

He returned to Britain in the Sixties and worked for regional and national newspaper groups in England and Scotland and was chairman and chief executive of Mirror Group Newspapers in the Seventies.

He retired to Herefordshire with his wife Paula.

Mr Roberts took regular holidays to Africa and was in Kalifa, Kenya, when he died on Sunday. His wife is waiting for his body to be returned to England before she can arrange a funeral.

She said: "My husband was a newspaperman through and through."