For our founder, autonomy always came before money

Founding editor of The Independent, Andreas Whittam Smith, could not have been a short man. If he'd been of low stature, he would not have retained the same other-worldly bearing.

- CHRIS BLACKHURST

Tall and stooped, he was softly spoken, often hesitant and slow in delivery.

This gave him an intellectual, somewhat patrician air. He came across as a don at university, rather than a cut-and-thrust, in-your-face, newspaper editor or proprietor. Pugnacious and swaggering, he was not.

But he was brilliant, inspiring huge loyalty and admiration among the staff. Courageous, too, prepared with his fellow ex-Telegraph co-founders, Stephen Glover, these days the Daily Mail's longtime commonsense columnist and Matthew Symonds, father of Carrie Johnson, to plunge into the shark-infested waters of Fleet Street proprietorship.

He was a man of determined principle, which somewhat unfairly earned him the sobriquet of “Saint Andreas” from Private Eye. But Andreas, who died on Saturday at 88, could be just as ruthless and calculating when he wanted to be. He wished to buy The Observer but only with the sole purpose of closing it down, to merge the historic Sunday paper with the Monday to Saturday Independent. He had the champagne ready in his office fridge. When, at the last minute, Tiny Rowland sold it to The Guardian, Andreas was furious.

His manner in meetings was deceptive - he would say little, let others speak, then give his verdict. At a morning editorial news conference, the discussion centred on House, the 1993 sculpture by Rachel Whiteread, where she'd made a concrete cast of the interior of a Victorian house. The stark structure had won her the Turner Prize.