Larry Kramer death: Author and Aids activist dies aged 84

Founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis died Wednesday

Author and activist Larry Kramer has died age 84 (Getty Images)

Larry Kramer, the renowned author and Aids and HIV activist has died at the age of 84.

The campaigner died on Wednesday in Manhattan from pneumonia, his husband David Webster told The New York Times.

Kramer was known both for his work as an author, notably his 1985 autobiographical play The Normal Heart, and his tireless work as an activist.

In 1981 Kramer founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a pioneer organisation in providing services for people with HIV.

He later founded the movement Act Up (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) which demanded faster research into the disease and called for an end to discrimination against gay people.

Kramer was known as a passionate activist, often regarded as using aggressive rhetoric to shock the country into dealing with the Aids public health emergency at a time when many politicians were refusing to address it, despite the mounting death toll from the early 1980s onwards.

He was born in 1935, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and attended Yale to study English literature.

Kramer graduated in 1957 and served a tour in the army, after which he went on to work in film and theatre in the US and in London. He married Mr Webster in 2013.