Author Ludovic Kennedy dies at 89

Ludovic Kennedy campaigned against miscarriages of justice
The author, broadcaster and campaigner Sir Ludovic Kennedy has died aged 89.
A former BBC Panorama journalist, Sir Ludovic spent decades investigating miscarriages of justice, including the case of the Birmingham Six.
He contributed to the abolition of the death penalty and was also president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.
He is understood to have died on Sunday at a nursing home in Salisbury, Wiltshire, after contracting pneumonia. He leaves four children.
Edinburgh-born Sir Ludovic was a prominent supporter of the British Humanist Association (BHA) and chief executive Hanne Stinson paid tribute to him.
"Sir Ludovic was a stalwart supporter of the BHA and a progressive campaigner on many fronts. He will be sorely missed," she said.
Executions
As a young man, Sir Ludovic joined the Royal Navy and his ship HMS Tartar was involved in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck.
After the war, he attended Oxford University and went on to become a successful journalist.
During his career, he carried out his own investigations into a number of high-profile criminal cases.


Among them was that of Derek Bentley, the last man in Britain to be hanged, who was sentenced for shooting dead a policeman even though someone else pulled the trigger.
His most famous book, 10 Rillington Place, caused a national outcry when it argued that another executed man, Timothy Evans, did not murder his baby daughter.
Sir Ludovic maintained that the serial killer John Christie was responsible, and after a police inquiry, Evans was granted a posthumous pardon in 1970.
'Pursuit of justice'
For much of his life, Sir Ludovic was a member of the Liberal Democrat Party and stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate in 1958.
He quit the party in 2001 when the then leader Charles Kennedy refused to endorse assisted dying, and stood for Parliament again unsuccessfully as an independent candidate on a pro-euthanasia platform.
He later rejoined the Lib Dems and current leader Nick Clegg paid tribute to him on Monday.
"Ludovic Kennedy was one of the great thinkers of his generation," he said.


"His pursuit of justice and his championing of sometimes unpopular and controversial causes marked him out as a true liberal. He will be greatly missed."
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying - formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society - said the organisation was saddened to hear of Sir Ludovic's death.
"He was a passionate advocate of assisted dying for terminally ill people, whose compassion and vigorous intellect were an asset to the organisation," she said.
"As a former president, he helped to lay the foundation for the recent successes of the campaign, with the director of public prosecutions now formally recognising a difference between compassionate and malicious behaviour, and the change in the law which will inevitably come."
Sir Ludovic married ballet dancer and actress Moira Shearer in 1950 and the marriage endured until her death in January 2006 at the age of 80. The couple had one son and three daughters.

Source BBC News Web-site.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8314778.stm

Author and broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy dies

By Jenny Booth




The distinguished journalist, broadcaster, author and sometime Liberal Democrat politician Sir Ludovic Kennedy has died, his family told The Times today.
Sir Ludovic, who had been frail for some time having developed pneumonia after a fall, passed away yesterday at a nursing home in Salisbury, aged 89.
He made his name as an investigative writer whose campaigns against miscarriages of justice helped to speed the abolition of the death penalty in Britain.
His book Ten Rillington Place contended that Timothy Evans should not have been executed for the murder of his baby daughter, as the crimes had in fact been committed by the serial killer John Christie.

After a fresh police inquiry Evans was granted a posthumous pardon. In 1970 the book was turned into a film starring John Hurt.
In later life Sir Ludovic was also a keen advocate of assisted dying, falling out with the then Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, over the issue and quitting the party in 2001. He later rejoined.
Born in Edinburgh on November 2 1919, the son of naval officer Edward Coverley Kennedy and baronet's daughter Rosalind Grant, he attended Eton College where he played in a jazz band with Humphrey Lyttelton.
When war broke out Sir Ludovic's father re-enlisted in the navy as a captain and was killed along with most of his crew when his ship the HMS Rawalpindi - a former P&O steamer - was sunk off Iceland by the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst.
The tragedy did not deter Sir Ludovic from enlisting in the navy in his turn and serving in the North Atlantic. His ship HMS Tartar was involved in the famous chase of the German battleship Bismarck after the Battle of the Denmark Strait, which he later wrote about in his book Pursuit.
After the war he attended Christ Church, Oxford, and became a journalist with Newsweek. In 1953 he ventured into radio, presenting the work of young British writers Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin on the series First Reading.
Television beckoned and he went on to become a newsreader on Independent Television News and a presenter on the flagship BBC current affairs programme Panorama.
For seven years from 1984 he was a familiar face presenting Did You See...?, a television review programme.
In 1985 he published The Airman And The Carpenter, in which he argued that Bruno Hauptmann was innocent of kidnapping and murdering Charles Lindbergh's baby, for which Hauptmann was executed in 1936. The book was made into a film starring Isabella Rossellini in 1996.
He also wrote about the Derek Bentley case and the Birmingham Six, compiling the most noted miscarriages of justice into a book called 36 Murders and 2 Immoral Earnings, published in 2003. He concluded that Britain's adversarial system of justice was "an invitation to the police to commit perjury, which they frequently do", and advocated moving to a Continental-style of inquisitorial justice.
He contested the 1958 by-election in Rochdale for the Liberal party, but lost to the Labour candidate. In the 2001 general election he contested the constituency of Devizes as an independent, on a platform of legalising voluntary euthanasia. He won 2 per cent of the vote.
A leading light in the British Humanist Association, he wrote All In The Mind: A Farewell To God in 1999, discussing his objections to religion and the ills he felt had come from Christianity.
The satirical magazine Private Eye occasionally referred to him as "Ludicrous Kennedy".
He married the dancer and actress Moira Shearer in February 1950 in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace, a marriage that only ended with her death in January 2006 at the age of 80. The couple had one son and three daughters.

Source:-
Times on Line.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6880739.ece