Independent columnist Miles Kington has died after a short illness, aged 66.
Kington, who had been with the paper since it started 22 years ago, wrote his last column for yesterday’s Independent.
Northern Ireland born Kington began freelance writing after graduating from Trinity College Oxford. A lover of jazz, one of his first print roles was as a jazz reviewer for The Times.
In 1965 he joined satirical magazine Punch, where he became literary editor in 1965. He then went on to write The Times’ comical ‘Moreover’column in 1981, but left the paper during the Wapping print union dispute and joined the Independent at its launch in 1986.
He was also a keen broadcaster, writing and appearing in a number of radio programmes and presenting a series of documentaries on world leaders for BBC Radio 4.
He wrote a number of stage plays and books, and in 2005 he wrote the autobiographical Someone Like Me: Tales From A Borrowed Childhood.
According to today’s Independent, Kington’s loyal readers ‘loved his writing more than any other in the paper”.
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