A FORMER photojournalist from Hereford has died aged 79 after a long and distinguished career behind the lens.

From his childhood home in Melrose Place, Michael Charity, a former Lord Scudamore pupil, had early ambitions for the theatre and was an active member of the YMCA Players.

He began his photographic career at the Broad Street studio of the late Derek Evans as an assistant and left in 1962 to establish his own news agency in Cheltenham.

Work quickly followed for national, regional and local newspapers and to the Fleet Street editors he soon simply became ‘Charity of Cheltenham’.

In the early 1960s, his obvious skills saw Independent Television offer him contracts as a news cameraman.

Twenty years ago, Mr Charity was sent to Gloucester’s Cromwell Street – the home of Fred and Rose West – by Central Television and he became the longest-serving journalist to work on the Cromwell Street inquiry.

Seasons of Death, a book about his experience which includes the police searches of farmland near Much Marcle, was released last year.

Mike is survived by his wife Gilly and son Dan, who is now a photographer for the Sun newspaper.

He said: “His work took him throughout the UK, Europe, Asia and Africa, at times covering trouble spots such as Borneo, Aden, Ireland and Romania.

“Mike also did charity work, including supporting the Cheltenham-based Kambia Hospital Charity in 1994 in Sierra Leone and the East Gloucestershire Hospital medics in Brasov, Transylvania, after the Romanian revolution”.

In 2008 the Daily Mirror published, on the tenth anniversary, a picture taken in the aftermath of the Northern Ireland Omagh Bombing, showing a wounded child being carried by a traffic warden. Mr Charity was later surprised and delighted to receive a telephone call from the victim saying that he was well and now enjoying a new life in Australia.

After a seven-year battle with cancer, Mr Charity died in the Sue Ryder Hospice at Leckhampton Court. His funeral will take place at 1pm on November 30 at Cheltenham Crematorium.