Heathcote Williams, radical poet, playwright and actor, dies aged 75

His poems blasted the arms trade, consumerism and the tabloids, and he was also an accomplished painter and sculptor

Heathcote Williams, the radical poet, playwright, actor and polymathic English genius, has died at the age of 75. He had been ill for some time and died on Saturday in Oxford.

He was the author of many polemical poems, written over four decades in a unique documentary style. They included works about the devastation being wrought on the natural environment – Sacred Elephant, Whale Nation and Falling For a Dolphin – and Autogeddon, a grim and majestic attack on the car.