Tributes paid to award-winning journalist Kenneth Roy

Tributes have been paid to Kenneth Roy, the veteran journalist whose career spanned print, online, television and radio for more than five decades.
Kenneth Roy has been described as a "unique" force in Scottish journalism.Kenneth Roy has been described as a "unique" force in Scottish journalism.
Kenneth Roy has been described as a "unique" force in Scottish journalism.

An award-winning reporter and editor best known for his spell co-presenting the BBC’s flagship Reporting Scotland programme, Mr Roy revealed earlier this year he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died earlier today at the age of 73.

Over the course of a varied and successful career, Mr Roy worked for newspapers including The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, and The Herald, and was named columnist of the year at the 1994 UK Press Gazette awards.

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His daily notebook, entitled Kenneth Roy’s Pocket Companion, graced the back page of The Scotsman for years.

Mr Roy, who was born in Falkirk and began his journalistic career at the age of just 13, working as the Bonnybridge correspondent of the Falkirk Mail, went on to write two personal accounts of post-war Scotland.

The Invisible Spirit, which spanned the period between 1945 and 1975, was described by Ian Hamilton QC as the most remarkable book about Scotland he had ever read. Its sequel, The Broken Journey, charted Scotland’s story to the turn of the millennium.

For the past 24 years, Mr Roy edited the Scottish Review, a quarterly print publication which went on to garner a large and appreciative online audience on account of its investigative journalism, essays, and arts coverage.