If the first rule of column writing is to be read and the second and third to be interesting and provocative, the journalist Rod Liddle, who has died aged 66 after a short illness, certainly met the bill. View image in fullscreen Rod Liddle in his time as editor of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. While at the BBC in 1993, Liddle began a relationship with Rachel Royce, a reporter, whom he married in a ceremony in Malaysia in 2004. Following the divorce from Royce, Liddle married Monckton in 2008 and the couple had a daughter, Emmeline. Roderick Edwin Liddle, columnist and broadcaster, born 1 April 1960; died 2 August 2026