IT WAS ALL NEWS TO ME

WELL, that's that century over and done - and to think I lived through most of it.

Even better, as a journalist I had the good fortune to be a storyteller carrying glad - and sad - tidings to the people.

Since I'm always asked which world events made the biggest impression, let me say I missed the most appalling story of them all - the annihilation of millions in the First World War.

As a schoolboy, I remember the abdication of King Edward VIII, who put his love for divorcee Wallis Simpson before the throne, and reached my teens during Britain's finest hour, which actually lasted from 1939 to 1945.

Taking the grown up years of the last half-century, one event surpassed all others - the assass-ination of John F Kennedy, the youth-ful war hero who became the first Catholic President of the United States.

The hopes of the world for peace and progress died with Kennedy in Nov-ember 1963 as he fell to the sniper's bullet of Harvey Lee Oswald, himself shot dead within hours by club owner Jack Ruby.

What brought the shocking event even closer home was the fact that Robert McNeil of NBC, a reporter in the presidential motorcade, broke the dreadful news to the world. Robert was a close friend who had worked with me in Fleet Street.

Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" as first man on the moon in 1969 brought to a close the most exciting decade of the century - the Swinging Sixties.

The Munich aircrash of February 1958 which wiped out half Manchester United's players was the biggest story I handled personally.

Historically, the century brought an end to war on a global scale, though conflict of a limited and localised variety, such as Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the Gulf and Kosovo, still produced big headlines.

Whatever happens in the world, no running story can match the appeal of our own Royal family, despite all the talk of the monarchy being abolished in the 21st Century.

They have dominated the news more than any other clan this century and yet few of us really know what goes on behind the walls of Buckingham Palace.

Even more extraordinary is that the most popular Royal of them all, adored the world over, was Princess Diana, discarded wife of the heir to the throne. Millions still mourn her death in a Paris car crash in September 1997.

Of all those people in the news I met in 70 turbulent years, she tops the list - a golden heroine straight out of a fairy story. What a loss.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.