A couple who met by chance thanks to a picture in a newspaper have celebrated 60 happy years of marriage.

Tom and Ilse Cranmer, of Gorringe Valley Road, Lower Willingdon, Eastbourne, became pen friends after Ilse was pictured in the old Brighton and Hove Gazette in 1943 with a gang of girls from the Junior Air Corps.

Nineteen-year-old Tom was training to be a wireless operator for the RAF with a friend from Brighton, whose mother sent them a copy of the paper.

Tom and his friends decided to write to the girls.

Seventeen-year-old Ilse and her friends each picked one letter and wrote back to its author. Three years later she married her pen pal.

She said: "It was obviously fate."

The couple first met in person in summer 1945, when Tom came on leave to Brighton. He said they spent a riotous 48 hours with no sleep, dancing at Sherry's in West Street and going to the pictures at the Regent in North Street.

They were married in October the following year at Brighton register office.

In civilian life, Mr Cranmer worked for the police in Suffolk, his home county, and later in East Sussex.

The Cranmers celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary at the weekend with a party at Hotel Hydro in Mount Road on Eastbourne seafront.

They were joined by family including their son and daughter, two grandchildren, friends and former colleagues.

Mr Cranmer, 82, said: "It was absolutely fantastic."