He was hired by Rees-Mogg in January 1971, by which time he was a well-known public figure who had just written an account of the 1960s entitled The Pendulum Years. The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital and went on to the London School of Economics, graduating in 1952.

The journalist and author Bernard Levin has died at the age of 75 after a 50-year career most celebrated for his columns in the Times. Levin was invited to appear regularly on BBC television's new weekly late-night satirical revue, That Was the Week That Was, where he delivered monologues to camera about his pet hates and conducted interviews, appearing as "a tiny figure taking on assorted noisy giants in debate". The libel action brought by Rothermere was settled out of court, at substantial cost to the proprietor of The Times, Lord Thomson. Not long ago, as I was going into the theatre for Scottish Opera's excellent new production of Das Rheingold ( keep calm, have I ever lied to you?Levin never married or had children, but is survived by his partner Liz Anderson, who tended him during a long decline from Alzheimer's disease. Levin's style was noted for its long sentences with copious sub-clauses and regular use of semi-colons - he once managed a 1,500-word sentence.

Born in London into a Jewish family of Lithuanian extraction in 1928, Levin was educated at Christ's Hospital and the London School of Economics, where he later became an honorary fellow.Levin never published an autobiography, but his book Enthusiasms, published in 1983, consists of chapters on his principal pleasures: books, pictures, cities, walking, Shakespeare, music, food and drink, and spiritual mystery. He looked about 16, phenomenally clean with scrubbed nails and a coil of dark hair like a bedspring lunging from his forehead . He wrote on a wide range of subjects, from a campaign for the release of three Arabs imprisoned by the British authorities, to supporting publication of the banned novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, [n 7] and denunciation of the retired Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard. In 1959, Gilmour, while remaining as proprietor, stepped down as editor and was succeeded by his deputy, Brian Inglis; Levin took over from Inglis as assistant editor. n 13] He wrote about performers he admired, including Otto Klemperer, Alfred Brendel, and Kiri Te Kanawa.