The US author and playwright Gore Vidal has died aged 86.
He was best-known for his best-selling novel “Burr” and stage play “The Best Man”.
He died at his home in Los Angeles last night following complications brought on by pneumonia.
He was one of the giants of a generation of American writers that included Norman Mailer and Truman Capote as well known for his flamboyant social and sexual life and trenchant political views as for his novels.
He wrote 25 novels, essays, Broadway hits, screenplays and television dramas in a career that also included unsuccessful runs for political office and celebrated talk show duels.
His 3rd novel “The City and the Pillar” dealt unabashedly with homosexuality.
It scandalized reviewers when it was published in 1948 but broke new ground in American literature.
Openly bisexual himself and he returned to the subject of sexual identity 20 years later in his transsexual satire “Myra Breckinridge”.
