Smash hit

Editor and columnist formed a strong bond, with Mr Levin ensconced in an adjoining office.

"It was an absolute delight to be working with him because he had a very powerful mind, he had strong principles and strong views," said Lord Rees-Mogg.

"He was an outstandingly honest journalist who said what he really believed and wrote like an angel.

"He was unquestionably the most read columnist of the 1970s. He was the sharpest writer, with the strongest glow of ideas, who also seemed to represent the feelings of the times."

"He had a desk in my outer office, and because he was an outside columnist and not a member of the staff, I felt able to discuss everything with him as it was happening, without feeling that he was also involved. He was in that way absolutely invaluable to me."

Lord Rees-Mogg said that he couldn't claim to have reciprocated by helping Mr Levin with his columns, as he never did need help with this writing.

"There are some of his pieces that I remember with absolute delight. I think of the piece about his mother and the gas board, and the one about the opera in Wexford where all the singers started sliding down towards the audience, because they had polished the boards and the rake of the stage was too steep.

"We had one agreement. He was a great Wagnerian, the agreement was that I was perfectly happy for him to write about Wagner as long as I didn't have to listen to it."

The friendship lasted after Lord Rees-Mogg left The Times in 1981, until Mr Levin's final years when, because of his illness, he hardly recognised his friends.

Simon Jenkins, a former editor of The Times, said that Levin was unquestionably the most considerable columnist of his generation.

He remembered Levin as a small, dapper, neat man, who was shy with new acquaintances, assertive with those he knew, and blossomed only in the presence of his friends.

"He always said to me: 'If in doubt, attack'," remembered Mr Jenkins.

"What is significant is that he came, not from a news or reporting background, but from theatre criticism. His stock in trade was opinion.

"His pieces could be absolutely savage in their attacks, on bankers, lawyers, dictators, anti-Semites. He absolutely detested Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore. He tended to champion freedom and oppose dictatorships.

"These may seem easy targets, but his writing was always fresh and they never seemed easy.

"He also hated bad food and bad opera. But some of his best writing was enthusiastic. He wrote wonderfully about music, and could write an entire column about a good dinner.

"To see Bernard surrounded by his old friends, to notice that actually the acerbity of his profession as a columnist was mellowed by the very close bonds of friendship, was to realise that he was a very shy man who communicated with the world through his pen rather than in any other way."

Ned Sherrin, the author, broadcaster and actor, said: "It’s been such a sad few years that one can’t be anything but relieved for him, I suppose.

"He was just one of the most challenging, interesting and affectionate people. It was an extraordinary delight that he could manage to be so sharp and yet at the same time such fun and so loyal. He was very special."

Sir Peter Stothard, a former editor of The Times, commented: "Bernard’s readers never knew whether to expect the long lash of whip-like sentences against some oppressor of lost freedoms, or those famous Levin coils of words protecting opera and fine food, the civilised beauties that he feared might be lost. Nor did the editor ever know either."

The Spectator cartoonist Michael Heath said that it was Levin who bought his first cartoon for the political weekly, where Heath cartoons have appeared ever since.

"In those days it was a racy magazine, it was hip, and it had a circulation of 80,000. Everyone wanted to appear in it. Bernard bought my first cartoon for four guineas. I can still remember it, a picture of some Arabs in a desert and one is saying, 'It's not manna, it's sliced loaf' - it was funny at the time.

"Bernard was terrific, encouraging - a lovely bloke."

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