Sunday Times journalist and award-winning interviewer Lynn Barber has been dropped by the newspaper, but said she will continue working as a freelance.

Barber told Press Gazette she was given a month’s notice to leave the title in early August ahead of her yearly, rolling contract coming up for renewal in October.

“There was nothing disgraceful about it,” said Barber, 74, who tweeted yesterday that she had been “sacked” from the newspaper, which she joined in 2009. “They said that my services were no longer required.”