Nesta Roberts, perhaps the most distinguished of a legion of one-time Grimsby Telegraph reporters, died in a Lincolnshire nursing home on 16 January, 2009, at the age of 97.

Miss Roberts, a vigorous and enthusiastic journalist all her long life, joined the Manchester Guardian in 1947 and between 1964 and 1974 was their Paris correspondent.

The author of many books and a staunch Francophile – her knowledge of France and its history was encyclopaedic – she was born in North Wales of a farming and seafaring family.

She came to Grimsby in the 1930s to work at the Telegraph under editors Hugh Paterson Haddow and John Taylor Brown.

She left the Grimsby Telegraph in 1941 for six years on the Nottingham Evening Post.

A determined horsewoman and pianist, she squeezed every ounce out of life.

She was a drama critic, feature writer, wrote short stories, a play for the BBC and several books on mental health and social medicine.

She retired to Louth and lived in George Street before a strokeforced her to move to the town's Fir Close nursing home.