Tributes paid to inspirational former Lord Mayor of Manchester who has died, aged 90

In the 1970s she began campaigning to end planning blight on hundreds of houses in her native Withington caused by a scheme to bypass Wilmslow Road. Dipping her toe into community issues would ultimately lead to her historic election as a Liberal councillor and then the city's highest ceremonial office.

Politics was not her only talent, she started a newspaper, and was a published author. At the height of her town hall career she attended a state banquet for Vladimir Putin.

Alderman Audrey Jones, who was Lord Mayor of Manchester in 2003-2004, has died aged 90. Born in Manchester in 1933, she lived in Withington all her life, with the exception of three of the war years, when she was evacuated to Derbyshire.

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She started a newspaper, the South Manchester Reporter, with herself selling advertising and Guardian journalist Robert Waterhouse as editor. Election to Manchester City Council representing Withington Ward for the Liberal Party - later the Liberal Democrats- came in 1978. She was the first Liberal in the modern era to be elected to the council; others followed within a year.

She was also President of the Ladybarn Garden Society, a governor of Mauldeth Road School, and a magistrate for 23 years. In 1989, fifty years after her evacuation, as a child, she published a book, Farewell Manchester, with the collected personal experiences of the wartime generation.

She continued as a councillor until 2006 and serving on various public bodies including the Greater Manchester Fire Authority.

Her son, Stephen, said: "Her father, Arthur Williams, was an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) warden and used to take her and her sister Barbara