Angus Calder, one of Scotland�s most distinguished intellectuals, died yesterday in Edinburgh just weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

Angus Calder, one of Scotland's most distinguished intellectuals, died yesterday in Edinburgh just weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

Calder, 66, was a historian, poet, essayist, editor and political commentator whose influence was felt across the board in Scottish artistic and cultural life.

Born in Surrey in 1942, the son of Scottish journalist and peace activist Baron Ritchie-Calder, he studied English literature at Cambridge. In 1969 he published The People's War: Britain 1939-1945, the work that made his name. A brilliantly vivid piece of social history, looking at the way the Second World War affected ordinary people, it has never been out of print.

Calder met his first wife, writer Jenni Calder, at Cambridge. He moved to Scotland in 1971 and for 14 years was a lecturer at the Open University, where he is remembered as a charismatic and inspirational teacher.

Tom Devine, professor of Scottish history and palaeo-graphy at Edinburgh University, said yesterday: "In my own field he was a major figure but his creativity and contribution was much deeper than that. He was in a literary sense a renaissance man: his work covered poetry, editing and fiction."

Calder is survived by his first and second wives, Jenni and Kate, and by four children, a son and two daughters by his first marriage, and a son from his second.