The funeral of Ian Bell, the award-winning journalist and columnist for The Herald and Sunday Herald, is to take place in Edinburgh on Tuesday.

Mr Bell died aged 59 after taking ill at his home in the Borders on Thursday of last week.

The service will be in the Main Chapel of Mortonhall Crematorium at 1pm. His funeral procession is to pass the Scottish Parliament.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said he was one of "Scotland's finest writers and a man of deep intellect and principle."

Her predecessor Alex Salmond said that Mr Bell "wrote beautifully and with a power and a vision that few, if any, could match".

BBC presenter Andrew Marr, a former colleague at The Scotsman, said that Scotland had lost "her finest journalist."

Others pointed to his ability to write authoritatively across a range of subjects.

The Proclaimers said that his breath of knowledge was "astounding and his understanding of Scotland’s cultural and political changes over the last 30 years was unsurpassed."

Edinburgh-born Mr Bell, who graduated from Edinburgh University, and spent a semester at Ivy League Dartmouth College in the US, was twice named Scottish Journalist of the Year and was awarded the title of Columnist of the Year on several occasions. He completed three books, including one on Robert Louis Stevenson that won the Saltire Prize for best book. He is survived by his wife Mandy, his son Sean, his brother Alan, sister Eileen and his father and mother.