A man who stabbed his wife to death in their own home before calling 999 to confess has apologised for the killing in a newspaper advert.

Edwin Brown, 73, placed the advert from his prison cell on the first anniversary of the killing. In the In Memoriam section, he apologised for stabbing Ann, 74, his wife of 52 years, to death after a row at their home in Lochinver, Sutherland, last May.

Brown, who ran a croft, is serving a seven-year jail sentence at Porterfield Prison in Inverness.

Psychiatric reports at his trial in the High Court in Edinburgh in December concluded he was suffering from serious depression, which had affected his reasoning. A guilty plea to a reduced charge of culpable homicide was accepted.

It is believed he phoned in the advert to the Northern Times. The message read: "BROWN, Ann Brown, Badnaban, near Lochinvar. I apologise to all friends and acquaintances and all who knew Ann (my bonnie Ann) for my terrible actions on the evening of 7th May, 2008, which led to her tragic death.

"Much loved and sadly very much missed. Her grieving and remorseful husband, Ed."