Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Telegraph, has described Auberon Waugh as a "one-off genius" who will be sorely missed by his family, friends and legions of fans of his Way of the World column in the paper.

He paid tribute to his wit and his anti-establishment views, fondly recalling that Waugh was the only man outside the IRA who publicly said he wished Margaret Thatcher had died in the Brighton bombing.

"One often speaks of people as being irreplaceable," said Moore, "but in this case it is true. He was a very original, real genius in journalism who brought a comic vision of the world to his writing. It was like the vision of an artist.

"Almost all journalists write more or less well, but we are not bringing a real artistic vision to our work.

"Though he was considered a figure of the right he was tremendously independent in his approach - the politics he really put forward was those of liberty, not of the left or the right.

"He was very against lords of all descriptions and there were a great many Tory causes he was dead against.

"He was the only person in the whole of Britain, apart from the IRA, who said he wished Mrs Thatcher had been killed in the Brighton bombing.

"It is an extreme example and I am not saying he really meant it and as always with him it was done in a comical way but it was something nobody else would have dared say.

"He greatly disliked morality wherever it came from and he was a great inspiration as a writer.

Mr Waugh, the eldest son of novelist Evelyn Waugh, never enjoyed the best of health - he lost one lung, a spleen and several ribs after a machine gun he tampered with accidentally went off.

He never fully recovered and in December became very ill from heart trouble.

His last column appeared just before Christmas when he took time to explain to the nation why Prince Charles was wrong to believe there was no reason why there should not be a Roman Catholic on the British throne.

"When MPs decided to elect a first Catholic Speaker six weeks ago, to replace the first woman Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, they failed to discover that the first Catholic was also a teetotaller, and was unable to select the special Speaker's Choice Whisky given by MPs as bribes to their constituents, which is such an essential part of our democracy. One dreads to think how many such problems might arise in the case of a Catholic monarch," Waugh wrote.