Broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy dies

Sir Ludovic, 89, is thought to have been in a frail condition for some time after developing pneumonia following a fall last year.

He was a BBC presenter and published his own investigations into well-known crimes and his work is credited with contributing to the abolition of the death penalty.

"Ludo" Kennedy's career championing the wrongly convicted began after 18-year-old Derek Bentley was hanged for his part in the murder of a policeman on a South London rooftop, though his friend Christopher Craig, 16, who had admitted firing the shot, but was too young to hang, was jailed.

Afterwards, the cases he took up ranged from Timothy Evans, executed for a crime almost certainly committed by serial-killer John Christie, to the Luton post office murder, in which a police officer conspired with a supergrass to help convict men he knew were innocent.

He also believed society osteopath Stephen Ward was a victim of injustice in the Profumo Affair in the 1960s and that the man hanged for the kidnapping and killing of aviator Charles Lindbergh's baby was framed.

To most people however Kennedy was the urbane presenter of Did You See on BBC2 or the anchorman on current affairs programmes such as This Week, Panorama, Midweek and 24 Hours.

Scottish on both sides of his family, he was born on November 2, 1919 in Edinburgh where his grandfather was the university's professor of international law. He was educated at Eton, where he played in a jazz band with Humphrey Lyttleton, and Christ Church, Oxford.

He served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and twice contested Rochdale as a Liberal in parliamentary elections.

In 1950 he married ballet dancer Moira Shearer who starred in the classic ballet film The Red Shoes. The couple had a son and three daughters. Their 56-year marriage ended with her death in 2006. He was knighted in 1994 for services to journalism.