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A reporter, presenter and producer, he covered stories such as the assassination of Martin Luther King and Watergate when based in Washington.
He spent eight years in the US capital, also reporting on the shooting of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy.
He was considered "a legend", BBC director general Mark Thompson said.
"His integrity, his authority and his humanity graced the BBC's airwaves over many decades," he added.
"He is utterly irreplaceable but like everyone else, I am privileged to have worked with him."
'Magnificent' man
Sir Charles began his media career at the Daily Sketch newspaper.
He ran errands at the now-defunct publication, having been inspired to become a journalist by a film he had seen as a teenager.
After five years in the Marines at the end of World War II, he joined the BBC in 1947 and spent 11 years as a writer and reporter for the BBC World Service.
Spells as the corporation's correspondent in South Asia and Germany followed, before his move to Washington.
He was also known as one of the faces of the BBC's Panorama and Newsnight programmes.
He received a knighthood for services to journalism in 2006.
Mark Damazer, the controller of BBC Radio 4, said Sir Charles was a "magnificent" man who "embodied all that is best in the BBC's journalism".
"He had a brilliant eye and an unequalled ability to convey what he saw and what he knew."
Mr Damazer said Sir Charles's work for Radio 4 over the past decade "demonstrated his astonishing range, dealing with central and eastern Europe, but also - and superbly - with the legacy at home of World War II".
He had been working "almost until he died" on a programme for Radio 4 on the Dalai Lama, Mr Damazer added.
As a reporter Sir Charles had covered the flight of the Dalai Lama after the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959.
(BBC)
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