Larry Kramer dies

Award-winning writer and AIDS activist, Larry Kramer has died, aged 84.

Originally coming from Connecticut, he started his career in London where he wrote the script for the movie Women in Love, based on the D.H. Lawrence novel.

He then went on to write the controversial novel Faggots in 1979, which came in for criticism from the gay community at the time for its depiction of gay promiscuity.

In 1982 in New York he founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), one of the world’s first organisations helping and campaigning for people with HIV and AIDS.

He was later to go on to found ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), a protest group to publicise governmental lack of treatment for people living with AIDS.

IN 1985 he wrote the play The Normal Heart, a largely autobiographical play about the AIDS crisis in Manhattan in the early 80s.