The Pendulum Years: Britain in the Sixties

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He and Cyril Ray used to shout abuse at each other across the office, with such insults as "little Jewish runt". But there were others too, The Pendulum Years (1971) a history of the 1960s, Conducted Tour (1981), a survey of the music festivals of Europe, and in 1985 he undertook a walk across Spain and France which led to In Hannibal's Footsteps, an informative and entertaining account of his walk and the places he passed through. The Guardian took him on in September 1955 to review the first broadcasts of ITV, which had just been launched as Britain's first commercial TV station.

Levin's noticeably Jewish surname, together with such skills as he had acquired in shorthand and typing, gained him immediate acceptance. He explains in captivating prose his understanding and love for various experiences of humanity, such as Shakespeare, or taking long walks. His range was prodigious; he published nine volumes of his selected journalism of which the first, Taking Sides, covered subjects as diverse as the death watch beetle, Field Marshal Montgomery, Wagner, homophobia, censorship, Eldridge Cleaver, arachnophobia, theatrical nudity, and the North Thames Gas Board. He remained there for eight years, and for the last five of them also wrote five columns a week on any subject of his choice.Bernard Levin, who has died aged 75, after many years of Alzheimer's disease, was one of the most famous as well as one of the most controversial British journalists and broadcasters of the second half of the last century. He wrote of a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in 1984, "Never, in all my life, not even at the exclusively Millais exhibition in 1967, have I seen so much sickening rubbish in one place at one time".

Simon Jenkins, the former Times editor, told the paper's online edition: "He always said to me: 'If in doubt, attack', which is at odds with the usual adage of journalism, 'if in doubt, leave it out'. The family lived in Camden Town and Bernard was brought up, though not strictly, in the Jewish faith. The programme, which had a short but much-discussed run, was transmitted live; this added to its edginess and impact, but also made it prone to disruption. Levin was happy to make fun of his obsession with Wagner; in a 1989 piece not concerned with music but about racism he began, "Will everybody please keep calm; this is not going to be about Wagner, however ominous the evidence.His father, of Lithuanian extraction, a St Pancras tailor, left her shortly after Bernard's birth in London. At the time, Truth had a very rightwing, even anti-semitic, reputation that Scott was anxious to get rid of. It contains a sentence that far outdoes his earlier 1,667 word effort in The Times, starting on page 212 and ending four pages later; it lists the restaurants most esteemed by Levin in Europe, Asia and America. He declared that he was no expert in politics, but Gilmour advised him, "review it as you would review television".

When he arrived to pick them up, he brought with him a spray of flowers which they had to pin on their dress, or sometimes, even more embarrassing, a garland for their hair. Levin hoped to go to the University of Cambridge, but, as his obituarist in The Times wrote, he "was not considered Oxbridge material". His illiterate grandparents' stories about life in Russia must have instilled in him the passionate belief in the freedom of the individual that lasted his whole life. Levin occupied a desk in the editor's outer office and the pair were in constant touch throughout the day. We digitise over 8,000 portraits a year and we cannot guarantee being able to digitise images that are not already scheduled.

Their job was to convey to voters the majesty of our legislators' oratory, to remind us of the surpassing importance of their deliberations. Apart from this column, which earned him the hatred of many MPs, he wrote separate articles commenting on the law - in particular what he saw as the folly of judges - civil servants and other public figures. For his friends, it was unbearably painful to watch his struggle to retrieve even the simplest word. He remained true to his declared intention of eschewing all forms of vehicular transport, and walked all the way, with the exception of his crossing the Rhone, rowing himself in a small boat. If you wish to license an image, select the portrait of interest to you, then look out for a Use this image button, or contact our Rights and Images service.