Heavyweight and unshowy journalist best known for presenting The World This Weekend on BBC Radio 4

The journalist and broadcaster James Cox, who has died aged 83, was best known for presenting the popular BBC Radio 4 Sunday show The World This Weekend for more than a decade from the mid-1990s.

However, his work as BBC Scotland’s political editor and presenter in the late 1970s and early 80s, during the rise of the Scottish National party and the first great devolution debate, was possibly of more importance. He covered the split in the SNP and the breakaway “79 group” led by a young and then unknown Alex Salmond as the party moved from being the “Tartan Tories” to Scotland’s most significant political force.