Ken Owen: Brilliant, bolshie editor and columnist

1935-2015: Ken Owen, who has died in Cape Town at the age of 80, was the editor of the Sunday Times from 1990 to 1996 and probably the most controversial and brilliant political columnist South Africa has ever had. "Brilliant" is an overused word and seldom justified. But in Owen's case it was. His newspaper columns, which appeared on a weekly basis from 1969 until he retired from the Sunday Times, were consistently brilliant, even if their brilliance was the only consistent thing about them.