MICHAEL DAVIE was one of the outstanding journalists of his generation, both as editor and writer, and for years was heir apparent to David Astor, the owner/editor who had made The Observer a leading newspaper. Under Astor, Davie revolutionised the sports pages, getting athletes and dons to write for him, was an inspiring news editor and deputy editor and launched the colour magazine in 1964. But his formal achievements never matched his talents.

Some of the young writers Davie championed and taught with a schoolmasterly strictness but kindly patience maintained that he should have succeeded Astor and would have changed the recent history of the British press. That he did not do this some ascribed to a fault in his character. Others blamed Astor himself or the influence of people about him, who never forgave Davie for leaving his Australian first wife, Robin, whom he married in 1954.

Whatever the truth, Davie may best be remembered less for his editing, his columns and his books than for the influence he had on other journalists, both his contemporaries and the then young reporters who, long afterwards, talked of him with gratitude and affection.

His admiration for reporters was unbounded and he had a rare knack for spotting and encouraging writing talent. His own hero was A. J. Liebling, who wrote about “The Wayward Press” in The New Yorker. Davie never tired of quoting Liebling and praising The New Yorker’s long pieces of reportage. He insisted that the title of “reporter” was an honourable one, at a time when reporters were beginning to be called “editors” of this or that.

He was given top marks by the reporters he admired — gifted stylists such as John Gale and Cyril Dunn. He fulfilled their belief in him when, from 1981 to 1988, he wrote a long weekly “Notebook” on the back page of The Observer. He then displayed his vast range of interests, producing elegant, readable columns on subjects as diverse as Mary McCarthy’s demolition of the playwright Lillian Hellman (which enraged the Redgraves) and a study of the problems of waste disposal.

As news editor, dealing with home and foreign news, Davie appeared unflappable to his foreign correspondents. He would pause expensively on the international line to think about which story the correspondent should chase that week.

To all his writing and editing, he brought a clear mind and a hungry curiosity. He asked the right questions, but he also kept an eye open for the hilarious detail. He swore that he would prefer to lose facts rather than jokes if a story had to be shortened.

Davie was born in Cranleigh, in Surrey, the youngest of three children. His father, who ran a stock-market firm, sent him to Haileybury in Hertfordshire. There, Davie made his mark as a cricketer and historian. His striking good looks as a young man remained with him as he aged.

It was a Haileybury schoolmaster, Martin Wight, sometime New York correspondent of The Observer, who introduced Davie to Astor. After dinner at Boodle’s, Astor’s club, Davie, then an undergraduate at Merton College, Oxford, was invited to write a notebook about a holiday and received the then generous fee of £8.

After a year at Merton reading English, Davie was called up, joined the Navy and served in the Pacific during the Second World War. He joined The Observer soon after his second spell at Merton, when he read history. He abandoned his academic ambitions when he failed to get in to All Souls.

His first job on The Observer was as religious correspondent, largely because the news editor could not think what else to do with the new recruit. As it happened, Davie was a Christian from an Anglican school, and he remained a churchgoer.

He never pressed his religious beliefs on anyone. He was a private person.

Davie had no strong interest in politics, but he admired Australia and America and visited both countries often. His trips to Australia usually coincided with an England cricket tour. His first book — a slim volume of 83 pages about Lyndon Johnson — was published in America in 1966. Based on articles written for The Observer, LBJ caused a stir in the US. It had arresting physical descriptions of the President and information about him which American reporters had ignored.

Davie’s second book, published in 1972, was an affectionate but clear-headed study of California, the Vanishing Dream, in which he set out to discover what had gone wrong in the land of the future.

When his first marriage failed, Davie, conventional in many ways and with a strict moral code, was appalled at his own behaviour in leaving his wife and three children. In a torment, he disappeared for weeks. It later emerged that some of the time he had spent at the Esalen Institute, an encounter group seminar centre he had written about in California. The disappearance cost him the deputy editorship, and Donald Trelford replaced him in 1969.

When Astor retired in 1975, Davie worked for the staff side in the curious consultation process about the succession. The seven distinguished candidates for the editorship included the writer Anthony Sampson, but Davie was not among them. Initially shocked, Davie had come to accept that he would never succeed Astor. Trelford became editor on January 1, 1976, and kept the job for more than 17 years.

For almost three years, from 1979-1981, Davie lived in Australia, where he edited The Age in Melbourne. He returned to England after he and The Age were fined for contempt of court because of an article on drugs that had caused a legal storm in Australia. He continued to write for The Age from London.

Davie laboured hard but enthusiastically to edit The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, published in 1976. In 1986, he brought out a well-researched book, The Titanic. He co-edited with his son, Simon, The Faber Book of Cricket, in 1987.

His most successful book was Beaverbrook: A Life (1992), which he co-authored with his second wife, Anne Chisholm. The book’s introduction draws on detailed notes Davie kept in his small, neat hand of meetings he had in 1956 in the South of France with Beaverbrook. Davie’s notes bring Beaverbrook vividly to life. At one point, the old man told Davie: “Never get dull”. He never did.

Davie is survived by his second wife, Anne; by his first wife Robin; and by his three children.

Michael Davie, journalist, was born on January 15, 1924. He died on December 7, 2005, aged 81.