In the US, Sir Charles, right, covered the assassination of Martin Luther King, Beatlemania, and Watergate.

He also worked for Newsnight for 15 years and was a Panorama producer.

He worked for Newsnight for 15 years and won awards for his documentaries for BBC radio and television.

Charles Cornelius Wheeler was born on March 26 1923, just a year after the BBC was founded. He attended Cranbrook School in Kent and began work as a newsroom messenger for the Daily Sketch newspaper.

He served as a Royal Marine during the Second World War then secured a post as a sub-editor on the BBC's Latin America service in 1947.

During the 1950s he worked as a correspondent in Germany and as a producer for Panorama before becoming South Asia correspondent in 1958.

During his four-year posting in Delhi he came to attention covering the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet. He also met Dip Singh whom he married in 1962. The same year the couple moved to the US after he was appointed Washington correspondent.

He was made chief US correspondent in 1969, a post he held until 1973 when he became Europe correspondent.

His style was direct and serious and he said he preferred voice-overs to appearing in front of the camera.

He once described the incoming prime minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as "an inexperienced eccentric at the heart of a government of mediocrities".

Reporting from Washington, he witheringly described President Ronald Reagan's dislike of reading, use of video briefings and reliance on his "instincts".

Perhaps his most famous comment was given to Jeremy Paxman on an edition of Newsnight as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. As Paxman tried to conduct a live interview from the scene despite being drowned out by the noise of crowds and fireworks, Wheeler commented: "Jeremy, this is pure Monty Python."

Gavin Esler, a former Newsnight colleague, described him as a "reporter's reporter". Despite having a reputation for being cantankerous, Esler said he was "a very easy person to be a friend of".

He said: "That's part of his great reporter's art: people like him."

His documentary series were still being broadcast last year and remained hugely popular with listeners and critics.

In 2000 he criticised the BBC for dumbing down and condemned news journalism for becoming too stylised.

He remained critical of the cult of personality which infected television news journalism in the generation that followed him.

True to form, when he was knighted in 2006 he ticked the box marked "no publicity".

He and Singh had two daughters, barrister Marina who is married to London mayor Boris Johnson, and Shirin, who followed him into the BBC.