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was announced yesterday on Radio 4's The World at One, the programme he has presented for the past twelve years. Obituaries in today's newspapers are united in their praise of one of the UK's most "honourable", "understated", "incisive" and "intelligent" broadcasters.

I never met Nick Clarke (and I regret that deeply), but I've been listening to him for years and I admired him enormously. Like many listeners, I was drawn in by his quietly devastating interviews, his avoidance of unnecessary theatrics, his gentle wit, and that wonderful voice. Many interviewers, even some great ones, forget something Nick Clarke never forgot: that the interview is not about the interviewer. I don't think I ever heard a Nick Clarke interview without learning something new about the subject under examination. As an interviewer, he practised the rare art of listening, which made me, as a listener, want to pay attention. The remarkable connection he established with radio audiences over the years is reflected in the kinds of by those, like me, who admired him and will miss his voice on Radio 4.

The late , still a broadcasting legend, was privileged to have another brilliant broadcaster as his biographer; and is not only the most authoritative account of Alistair Cooke's life, it's also one of the most fascinating analyses of radio broadcasting one can read.

I texted a colleague today, an old friend of Nick's from Radio 4 days, and said I hoped there would be a future for Nick's kind of journalism.

Mark Damazer, the controller of Radio 4, has written a terrific tribute to a journalist he rightly describes as a broadcasting "colossus".

If you missed it the first time, you can still listen to Fighting to be Normal, Nick Clarke's audio diary of his life following a diagnosis of cancer.