Monitor: British tributes to Conservative MP, historian and diarist Alan Clark who died this week

All the News of the World: Alan Clark

Evening

Standard

TO THE end, he remained an enfant terrible, always saying the unsayable and thinking the unthinkable. He was a wildly unsuitable minister, because he lacked the most rudimentary sense of judgement or responsibility. But he added vastly to the gaiety of politics, and will be hugely missed.

The Guardian

WITH CLARK, the expected was rarely expected. Everything about it proclaimed his disrespect for convention. For all his insouciance, he was a serious man. Even the wildly indiscreet diaries which may come to be seen as his principal monument were a form of serious history. They had much to teach about how politicians talked and behaved. Most might fear to admit it: but they were trapped by boring convention. Life never trapped Clark that way.

The Spectator

THE KENSINGTON and Chelsea by-election may well be the last of this century, and one of the more important ones. The thought that he could not even die without creating a political crisis would give Alan Clark's shade some wry amusement. (Bruce Anderson)

The Mirror

ALAN CLARK was that rare person - a lovable right-wing Tory. Anyone who is praised by Tony Benn and Norman Tebbit must have something going for him. He got away with his extremist views and even more extreme womanising by being completely frank and honest. The angels had better beware of what he gets up to in heaven.