Gore Vidal, who wrote two dozen novels, countless essays and screenplays, and gave a lifelong commentary on the USA and its habits, has died aged 86.

After listening to an extract of the author reading from his memoirs, Point to Point Navigation, on Radio 4's Bookclub in 2008, Erica Wagner, literary editor of The Times, described Gore Vidal as someone who was always "ahead of the pack".

Sir Jonathan Miller, who had met the author several times since the 1960s, remembers him as a patrician figure and as someone who was always "very amusing".

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