US Author Gore Vidal Dies Aged 86

The American author, playwright and commentator Gore Vidal has died at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 86.

Vidal died on Tuesday at his house in the Hollywood Hills after contracting pneumonia and developing complications, according to his nephew Burr Steers.

Widely admired as an independent thinker, Vidal picked apart politicians - living and dead, mocked religion and prudery, opposed wars from Vietnam to Iraq and insulted his peers like no other.

He started writing as a 19-year-old soldier stationed in Alaska, basing Williwaw on his Second World War experiences.

His works include essays on society, sex, literature and politics, the groundbreaking The City and the Pillar - among the first novels about openly gay characters - and the Tony-nominated political drama The Best Man.

Vidal's literary legacy also includes a series of historical novels - Burr, 1876, Lincoln and The Golden Age, as well as the transsexual comedy and best-seller Myra Breckenridge.

Born Eugene Luther Vidal Junior in West Point, New York, he took his mother's surname as his first name.

The young Vidal developed an interest in politics growing up in Washington DC where his grandfather, Democratic US Senator Thomas Gore of Oklahoma, had a strong influence on him.

After his parents divorced, Vidal's mother married Hugh Auchincloss, who later also became the stepfather of Jacqueline Kennedy. That connection gave Vidal access to the Kennedy White House before a falling out with the family.

Vidal, a distant cousin of former US vice president Al Gore, was uncomfortable with the literary and political establishment, and the feeling was mutual.

Beyond an honorary National Book Award in 2009, he won few major writing prizes and lost both times he ran for office.

He once described the United States as "the land of the dull and the home of the literal" and starting in the 1960s spent much of his time living in Italy.

Vidal never married and for decades shared a scenic villa in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast with companion Howard Austen, before returning to the States in 2003.