Bestselling author dies

Frank McCourt has has died of cancer aged 78.

09:21 20 July 2009

Bestselling author Frank McCourt has died of cancer aged 78.

McCourt, who wrote 'Angela's Ashes', was suffering from meningitis and had been diagnosed with melanoma – a deadly form of skin cancer.

Susan Moldow, of McCourt's publisher Scribner, told the New York Times that he died on Sunday afternoon in a New York hospice, from metastatic melanoma.

McCourt's iconic biography 'Angela's Ashes', published in 1996, was a memoir of his childhood in Ireland.

It gives a graphic description of what life was like for a child living in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, during the Great Depression.

It sold millions of copies worldwide and won the Pulitzer Prize. It was also made into a Hollywood film in 1999 starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle.

Before his career as a writer, McCourt was an English teacher in a New York high school for 30 years.

Other book titles of his include 'Tis', 'Teacher Man' and 'Angela and the Baby Jesus'.