The former president of the Bradford & Bingley Building Society and husband of celebrated stage and screen star Pat Kirkwood has died.

Peter Knight, one of Britain’s most distinguished solicitors for four decades, died at Cottingley Hall Nursing Home, Bingley, from a respiratory infection and a heart attack, following a short illness at the age of 94.

Mr Knight was brought to prominence through his marriage to Miss Kirkwood in 1981, with whom he lived in Bingley.

He was seen by millions of viewers sitting beside her in a This Is Your Life television tribute to her in July, 1994.

Tributes have been paid to Mr Knight, who leaves five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and his two children, Nicholas Knight, who lives in Ilkley, and Carolyn Watson, who lives in Harrogate.

Michael Thornton, Royal biographer and national newspaper columnist, was a friend Mr Knight and Miss Kirkwood for many years. He said: “What has happened has come as a shock to everyone.

“Peter had been so amazing for so long, and had survived so much in his life, that we had almost come to think of him as immortal.

“It has come as a great grief to all his family. His son had only just come back from Ireland to see him.

“Peter was the focal point of all the family. I cannot think of anyone in my life who was so much loved – by his two children his five grandchildren and his five great-grandchildren.

“In 30 years of knowing him, he was the best friend I have ever had. The world suddenly seems a bleaker and lonelier place without him.”

Mr Knight was born in 1916, in Blenheim Road, Manningham, the youngest of three sons of Bradford wool merchant James Young Knight and his wife Fanny Sampson.

At 16 he entered his uncle’s Bradford law firm, Sampson, Horner & Co, and in 1938 was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court.

He was to become senior partner of the practice and one of the most distinguished lawyers in the country. In the run-up to the Second World War he was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment, rising to the rank of captain and major.

Mr Knight was appointed vice-president of the B&B in 1977 and became president two years later.

In 1980 his first wife, Gwendoline, to whom he had been happily married for 41 years, died from cancer at the age of 63.

He met Miss Kirkwood in Portugal and married her in 1981 in Gibraltar.

In 1983, he encouraged his wife to return to the stage in a one-woman show.

Miss Kirkwood, who died at an Ilkley nursing home on Christmas Day 2007, was linked by the media, and by royal biographers, with Prince Philip after the couple met in 1948, when Princess Elizabeth was eight months pregnant with the Prince of Wales.

Media speculation about their relationship continued for decades, despite both Miss Kirkwood and Mr Knight’s consistent denials of any suggestions of an affair.

Mr Knight’s funeral will take place at 12.30pm next Thursday at All Saints Parish Church, in Old Main Street, Bingley.