Sir Trevor Lloyd-Hughes

He was appointed to No 10 after Wilson, a fellow Yorkshireman, won the 1964 General Election, leaving his post as political correspondent of the Liverpool Daily Post which he had held for 13 years.

The two worked closely together for some years until, in 1969, his deputy Joe Haines was promoted and Sir Trevor was moved to a new Cabinet Office job co-ordinating government information.

He was with Wilson during the talks with Ian Smith prior to Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, and during later attempts to negotiate a settlement aboard HMS Tiger. Sir Trevor resigned after the Conservatives won the 1970 General Election and was knighted in Wilson's resignation honours.

Trevor Denby Lloyd-Hughes was born in Bradford and educated at

Woodhouse Grove School. He was commissioned with the Royal Artillery in 1941 and served throughout the Second World War in the Western Desert, Sicily and Italy with the 75th Shropshire Yeomanry.

After the war, he went up to Jesus College, Oxford, which was also Wilson's alma mater, where he captained the rugby XV.

He then spent a year with the Inland Revenue before turning to freelance magazine writing, and in 1949 joining the Daily Post where, apart from a short period on its sister paper the Liverpool Echo, he remained until moving to Downing Street.

In 1971 he formed a government relations consultancy, Lloyd-Hughes Associates, building up a practice that continued until 1989 advising industry on how to find its way around Whitehall.

He was a director of Trinity International Holdings from 1978 to 1991.

He was an expert on wine and in 1972-73 was chairman of the Circle of Wine Writers.

He was married in 1950 to Ethel Durward, and had a son and a daughter, but was divorced in 1971. He then married Marie-Jeanne Moreillon with whom he had a daughter, and in 1975 adopted a six-year-old Thai girl.