Journalist Ludovic Kennedy dies at 89

LONDON (Reuters) - Campaigning journalist, author and broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy has died at the age of 89, his agent said on Monday.

He died of pneumonia at a nursing home in Salisbury, Wiltshire, newspapers reported.

Kennedy made his reputation with decades of work trying to right miscarriages of justice.

Several of his books question the convictions of a number of notable cases in Britain, including "36 murders and 2 Immoral Earnings," which details his work on the Birmingham Six case, whose freedom he helped win in 1991 after they had spent 16 years in jail, falsely accused of two IRA pub bombings.

Kennedy's judicial campaigning contributed to the abolition of the death penalty in Britain in 1965.

He was a familiar face on television and presented BBC's Panorama current affairs show in 1959 after failing to win a Liberal parliamentary seat.

He was knighted in 1994 for services to journalism.

"Ludovic Kennedy was one of the great thinkers of his generation," said Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.

A leading humanist, Kennedy helped found the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and in 1999 published "All in the Mind: Farewell to God" in which he characterised God as a creation of human beings rather than the reverse.