A. A. Gill

Adrian Anthony Gill (28 June 1954 – 10 December 2016) was a British journalist, critic, and author.

Best known for his food and travel writing, he was also a television critic, was restaurant reviewer of The Sunday Times, wrote for Vanity Fair, GQ, and Esquire, and published numerous books.

In 1964, he appeared briefly in his parents' film The Peaches as a chess player.

Gill was educated at the independent St Christopher School, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, and later recalled his experiences at the school in his book The Angry Island.

After St Christopher's, he moved to London to study at the Saint Martin's School of Art and the Slade School of Art, nurturing ambitions to be an artist.

Following art school Gill spent six years "signing on, trying to paint, until one day he realised he wasn't any good".

At the age of 30, having abandoned his ambitions in art, he spent several years working in restaurants and teaching cookery.

Gill began his writing career in his thirties, writing "art reviews for little magazines".

After failing to establish himself as an artist, Gill wrote his first piece for Tatler in 1991 and joined The Sunday Times in 1993.

Known for his sharp wit, and often controversial style, Gill was widely read and won numerous awards for his writing.

On his death he was described by one editor as "a giant among journalists."

His articles were the subject of numerous complaints to the Press Complaints Commission.

Gill was born in Edinburgh to an English father, Michael Gill, a television producer and director, and a Scottish mother, Yvonne Gilan, an actress.

He had a brother, Nicholas.

The family moved back to the south of England when he was one year old.

His first piece for Tatler, in 1991, was an account of being in a detox clinic, written under the pseudonym Blair Baillie.

In 1993, he moved to The Sunday Times where, according to Lynn Barber, "he quickly established himself as their shiniest star".

He also wrote two novels which were generally poorly reviewed – Sap Rising (1996) and Starcrossed (1999).

Starcrossed was given the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

He wrote several books on individual restaurants and their cuisine – Ivy (1997), Le Caprice (1999), Breakfast at the Wolseley (2008) and Brasserie Zedel (2016).

In 1997, in The Sunday Times, Gill described the Welsh as "loquacious dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls".

His comments were reported to the Commission for Racial Equality and used as an example of what was described as "persistent anti-Welsh racism in the UK media" in a motion in the National Assembly for Wales.

The CRE declined to prosecute, saying that Gill "had not meant to stir up racial hatred."

Gill's comments led him to become the subject of the song "Little Trolls" by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers, the B-side to their 2001 single "Ocean Spray".

In the song, Manics' lyricist Nicky Wire reflects Gill's comments on the Welsh back at him, referring to him as a "Spiteful twisted unforgiven, sad and inverted and stunted, retarded ugly balding old man".

Collections of his travel writing were published as AA Gill is Away (2002), Previous Convictions (2006) and AA Gill is Further Away (2011), his Tatler and Sunday Times food writing as Table Talk (2007) and his TV columns as Paper View (2008).

He wrote books studying England – The Angry Island (2005), and the United States – The Golden Door (2012).

Gill's feud with the Isle of Man began in 2006 with a review of Ciappelli's restaurant in Douglas.

Gill wrote that the island:"managed to slip through a crack in the space-time continuum […] fallen off the back of the history lorry to lie amnesiac in the road to progress […] its main industry is money (laundering, pressing, altering and mending) […] everyone you actually see is Benny from Crossroads or Benny in drag…. The weather's foul, the food's medieval, it's covered in suicidal motorists and folk who believe in fairies."

The review was attacked in the Tynwald, the Manx parliament, with House of Keys member David Cannan demanding an apology for the "unacceptable and scurrilous attack".

Gill made further comments regarding the Isle of Man in his Sunday Times column on 23 May 2010, when he described its citizens as falling into two types: "hopeless, inbred mouth-breathers known as Bennies" and "retired, small arms dealers and accountants who deal in rainforest futures".

In 2014, Gill won an Amnesty International Media Award, and a Women on the Move award for a series of Sunday Times Magazine articles on refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jordan and Lampedusa.

In 2014, he also won the "Hatchet Job of the Year Award" for his scathing review of Morrisey's Autobiography.

In 2015 he published a memoir, Pour Me.

On his death, The Sunday Times editor Martin Ivens described Gill as "the heart and soul of the paper" and "a giant among journalists".

Gill's acerbic style led to several controversies and complaints from public figures during his career.

He continued to write for The Sunday Times until shortly before his death in 2016.

Gill was also a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and GQ.

He wrote a series of columns for GQ, on fatherhood and other subjects.

He also wrote for Esquire, where he served as an agony uncle, "Uncle Dysfunctional".