This year, few public figures have enjoyed as resounding a send-off as the newspaper columnist Rod Liddle.
Mr Liddle, who died this week, is being hailed as a truth-teller for our times whose trenchant columns "upset all the right people".
There’s no denying that Liddle was a sometimes dazzling writer who grabbed the reader’s attention and never let it go.
Many tributes have emphasised this heaven-sent quality, and many have added that a kindly soul lurked behind the intimidating public personality.
But very few tributes even touched on the fact that Liddle was also a racist, a bigot and an Islamophobe. This open and undisguised bigotry was a core part of his public identity, his personality and his legacy.
