Campaigning journalist, author and broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy has died at the age of 89, it emerged today.
He died of pneumonia at a nursing home in Salisbury, Wiltshire.
Mr Kennedy made his reputation with decades of work trying to right miscarriages of justice.
Several of his books question the convictions of a number of notable cases in Britain, including 36 murders and 2 Immoral Earnings, which details his work on the Birmingham Six case, whose freedom he helped win in 1991 after they had spent 16 years in jail, falsely accused of two IRA pub bombings.
Kennedy's judicial campaigning contributed to the abolition of the death penalty in Britain in 1965.
He was a familiar face on television and presented BBC's Panoramacurrent affairs show in 1959 after failing to win a Liberal parliamentary seat. He was knighted in 1994 for services to journalism.
"Ludovic Kennedy was one of the great thinkers of his generation," said Liberal Dempcrat leader Nick Clegg.
A leading humanist, Kennedy helped found the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and in 1999 published All in the Mind: Farewell to Godin which he characterised God as a creation of human beings rather than the reverse.
The chief executive of the British Humanist Association Hanne Stinson paid tribute in a statement: "Sir Ludovic was a stalwart supporter of the BHA and a progressive campaigner on many fronts. He will be sorely missed."
The Eton-educated writer Ludovic followed his sea captain father into the Navy, serving aboard destroyers in the Arctic and North Atlantic during the Second World War. He was involved in the chase of the
Bismarck, an incident he chronicled in his book
Pursuit.
He later went to Oxford's Christ Church and began a career in journalism, moving from print publications such as Newsweek to TV work. He was an ITN newsreader and later became an anchorman for the BBC's
Panorama.
For many BBC viewers he will be best known for his appearances on the BBC2 TV review show
Did You See...?but it was his campaigns against injustice which were among the most fulfilling parts of his career.
His celebrated book
10 Rillington Place, later turned into a film, demonstrated that Timothy Evans had been wrongly convicted of a murder committed by the serial killer John Christie. Evans was later pardoned and the case was a component in the abolition of the death penalty.
Mr Kennedy was also a candidate at the first by-election to be given live TV coverage when he stood as a Liberal for the Rochdale seat in 1958. He lost to Labour but managed a huge boost for Liberal fortunes.
He was married to ballet dancer Moira Shearer, who starred in the classic ballet film
The Red Shoes. The couple, who had a son and three daughters, were married for 56 years until her death in 2006.
PA