Miles Kington

Background

Miles Kington was born in Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland, where his father, a captain in the Royal Ulster Rifles, was posted. He was educated at Bilton Grange prep school and Trinity College, Glenalmond, then studied Modern Languages at Trinity College, Oxford. During a gap year he worked as a translator in New York City and lived in Greenwich Village. After Oxford he briefly wrote with Terry Jones, but the partnership did not click.

Kington began his writing career at Punch, inspired by American humorist S. J. Perelman. In the late 1970s he started his Franglais columns, written in a comical mixture of English and French, later published as books and made into a short TV series in 1984. He also presented Steam Days about Britain's railways and one episode of Great Railway Journeys. He played double bass for the cabaret quartet Instant Sunshine.

He wrote a humorous column for The Independent from 1987, after six years at The Times, and also wrote for The Oldie. He wrote two stage plays: Waiting for Stoppard (1995) and The Death of Tchaikovsky – a Sherlock Holmes Mystery (1996). He died at his home in Limpley Stoke after a short illness from pancreatic cancer, having just filed his final copy for The Independent.