AA Gill’s Final Article Is Brutally Honest And Very Moving

Award-winning journalist AA Gill's final article has been published in The Sunday Times following his death from cancer yesterday. In the cover feature for The Sunday Times Magazine, Gill writes with characteristic frankness about beginning a course of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with what he called "the full English" of cancers. He also reveals that a type of treatment that could potentially have extended his life, immunotherapy, was initially unavailable to him because the NHS considers it "too expensive." Gill had previously said he chose NHS treatment over paying for private medical care because of the "human connection" it provides. Though he writes unsentimentally about the limitations of NHS treatment in his article, the final paragraph, which it would be a shame to spoil here, underlines what he meant by this "human connection" beautifully. Gill had written for The Sunday Times since 1993 and the newspaper's editor, Martin Ivens, has paid tribute to him today, saying: "His wit was incomparable, his writing was dazzling and fearless, his intelligence was matched by compassion. Adrian was a giant among journalists. He was also our friend. We will miss him." He has also received tributes on Twitter from friends, colleagues and even people he criticised in his writing. "RIP AA Gill. He trashed me for 20 years but always with magnificently eloquent savagery & an irritating kernel of truth," Piers Morgan wrote. Joan Collins, who was famously dining with Gill at one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants in 1998 when the chef decided to throw them out, tweeted: "Desperately sad that my friend AA Gill has died. He was a shining intellectual with a remarkable wit. There will never be anyone like him." AA Gill is survived by his long-term partner Nicola Formby, editor-at-large at Tatler, and by four children. He was 62 years old. Read a selection of tributes to the late writer below.