Former Daily Mail writer Shaun Usher, who later found success as a prolific writer of crime fiction, has died aged 88.
Usher was one of the Mail's most versatile journalists. A brilliant and acerbic critic, both of the West End and of Hollywood movies, he was also a distinguished foreign correspondent with a string of highly readable despatches to his name.
In 1980 he secured an exclusive interview with the dying Shah of Iran, then living in exile in Panama.
The following year he was on the Tarmac at Wiesbaden, in what was then West Germany, for the dramatic moment America's 52 hostages held by Tehran's Ayatollah Khomeini for 444 days finally stepped into freedom.
He was in New York when John Lennon was gunned down outside his home in the Dakota building opposite Central Park and his powerful account of the December 1980 shooting was entwined with the ex-Beatle's position as a cultural icon, which leant heavily on Usher's earlier role as a showbusiness writer.
