Former Private Eye journalist and writer Richard Leaf West, who lived in Deal, has died age 84.

Richard, known as Dick to his family and friends, was born in London on July 18, 1930.

He died at his home in West Street, on Saturday, April 25. He is fondly remembered by his wife, Mary Kenny West, and sons, Patrick and Edward.

Mr West was evacuated to Canada and the US during the Second World War.

On returning to Britain he went to Marlborough College in Wiltshire and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read history.

He followed in his father’s footsteps in becoming a journalist, starting out at the Manchester Guardian in the 1950s, as a local reporter in the north-west of England and Yorkshire.

He would later inspire his own sons to follow into the profession.

After a period with the Daily Mirror in London, Mr West became a freelance journalist, reporting from Yugoslavia, Africa and the Vietnam war.

Friends say he produced his finest work in south-east Asia. Reporting on the war and its aftermaths from the fury of the American engagement in the late 1960s through to the final communist victory in 1975 and on to the gradual relaxation of the new regime in the 1990s, he travelled all over Indochina.

Private Eye, the Sunday Times, the New Statesman and the Spectator are among the titles he wrote for. As well as reporting, he presented a BBC documentary on Vietnam in 1975 and found the time to write 18 books.

He married Irish journalist Mary Kenny in 1974.

Mrs West said: “He discovered Deal in 1997 and we moved there in 1998.

“He was writing a book about Chaucer, which led him first to Canterbury.

“He fell in love with Deal because of researching in this area. He thought it was an old-fashioned English seaside town, and it did have an association with journalists. He deliberately chose to live here.”

Mrs West said her husband also loved the pubs in Deal, especially the Prince Albert, the Deal Hoy and the Penn, which no longer exists.

Mr West’s funeral will be at St Andrew’s Church in Deal on Friday, May 15. His cousin, actor Timothy West, who played Stan Carter in EastEnders, will be among those attending.