Death of a great writer: Hunter S. Thompson

Tragic news from Colorado where it emerged last night that legendary journalist-cum-author Hunter S. Thompson has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Woody Creek home.

Talking to the Aspen Daily News, his son Juan said: "Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family."

One of the creators of the 'Gonzo' school of journalism, Thompson became a household name in the States through his irreverent contributions to Rolling Stone magazine.

While often on the wrong side of the law – he once spent 60 days in jail for vandalism – the 67-year-old had a sharp political brain, which was evident in his Nixon-nailing Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72.

Reflecting recently on the tome, Thompson said: "He personified the enemy. He stood for everything that was wrong and rotten. It was Nixon who drove a very serious spike into the American dream. Nixon was the first president to be so massively and publicly exposed as an evil bastard."

Of course, it was the rather more fictional Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas with its killer "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold" line that established him as an Ernest Hemingway for the baby boomer generation.

Thompson was a huge fan of Hemingway who also died, at the age of 69, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

"I think George Washington owned guns," Hunter said in 1997 of his fascination with firearms. "I've never seen any contradiction with that. I'm not a liberal, by the way. I think that's what's wrong with liberals. I believe I have every right to have guns. I just bought another huge weapon. A lot of people shouldn't own guns. I have a safety record. Guns are a lot of fun out there."

Despite health problems brought on by all those years of excess, Thompson was closely involved with the 1998 big screen adaptation of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and continued to hit the best-sellers list with a novel he'd written in his youth, The Rum Diary, and various collections of articles and correspondence.

Others things you ought to know about Hunter S. Thompson? He was the inspiration for Duke in Doonesbury; was rumoured to be the real Kyser Soze; and lent his name to an independent label set up in the '90s by then Something Happens manager Conor O'Mahony.

The bottom line though is he was a dream of a writer, an incorrigible maverick and one of the defining voices of his generation. The old rascal will be missed.