The Times has launched a new bursary scheme in honour of its former foreign editor, Richard Beeston, who died a year ago aged 50.

The newspaper is offering two £6,000 awards under the bursary, one for an aspiring foreign correspondent, and another for a journalist with experience of working in Lebanon, the occupied West Bank or Israel.

In addition to the money, the aspiring foreign correspondent will spend six weeks abroad, researching and reporting for the paper. The other winner, meanwhile, will undertake a six-week fellowship on The Times’s foreign desk in London.