Harold Evans, the legendary former editor of The Northern Echo, has been voted the greatest of all time in a poll.

Mr Evans, who drove forward The Echo's famous campaigning traditions during the 1960s, won the British Journalism Review/Press Gazette poll to discover the greatest newspaper editor.

He led The Echo from 1961 to 1966, and is also the only person to have edited both The Times and The Sunday Times.

During the 1960s, an Echo campaign won a posthumous pardon for Timothy Evans, who was hanged in 1950 after being wrongly convicted of strangling his baby daughter.

There were also campaigns against inflammable nightwear, following accidents in which women were burned, a campaign for better roads, and campaigns against industrial pollution on Teesside.

Mr Evans' extraordinary achievements brought him to the attention of Fleet Street and he eventually left The Echo for London, before going on to America.

He was a clear winner in the poll, ahead of C P Scott, the father figure of The Guardian. Former editor of The Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, and Sir David English shared third place.