Pioneering Liverpool poet Brian Patten has died at the age of 79.
The Bootle native rose to prominence during the late 1960s when he co-wrote The Mersey Sound anthology with Roger McGough and the late Adrien Henri.
Patten grew up in Wavertree and was late honoured by his home city by receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool alongside McGough in 2006.
He was also awarded the Freedom of Liverpool in 2001 and later became the presenter of BBC Radio 4 series Lost Voices.
Jane Johnson, who was Patton’s editor at HarperCollins since 1985, confirmed that he passed away peacefully in hospital on Monday with wife Linda at his side.
She said: “Brian was a force of nature, so full of light and life that he was impossible to contain.
“He could be a challenging writer to publish, a quicksilver spirit that slipped through your hands, impossible to pin down, one day elated with a new piece, the next hating everything about it.
“On and off through the decades, I did all I could to shepherd his words into published form.
“Throughout the last two decades he would send me excerpts from the memoir he was writing, tantalising fragments of an extraordinary life lived to the max in heart, body and soul.
“He signed off a recent email to me with: ‘What news? It’s dragonfly time here. The lake down the lane is alight with them’.
“Brian Patten leaves the world alight with his words.”
McGough paid tribute to Patten on social media, describing himself as being ‘laid low’ by his fellow wordsmith’s death and describing him as his ‘soul-mate’.