Alexander Waugh, the critic and author who wrote about his own literary family in a 2004 memoir, has died at 60, the New York Times reports.

Waugh, a London native, was the son of journalist Auberon Waugh and the grandson of legendary novelist Evelyn Waugh (Decline and Fall, Brideshead Revisited). He was educated at the University of Manchester and began his career as a journalist, first contributing cartoons to newspapers and then working as an opera critic for the U.K. Mail on Sunday and Evening Standard.

He made his literary debut in 1995 with Classical Music: A New Way of Listening, which he followed up with Opera: A New Way of Listening; Time; and God.

In 2004, he published Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family, which told the story of his literary ancestors as well as his own life as a writer. The book drew praise from critics, including one from Kirkus, who called it “a candid, intimate and touching portrait of the author's masculine forebears, composed in nimble prose.” Five years later, he wrote The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War, a biography of the famed German-Austrian family.

Waugh’s admirers paid tribute to him on social media. On the platform X, journalist Elizabeth Winkler wrote, “I’m very sorry to hear about the death of Alexander Waugh, a kind, generous, and brilliant man who possessed, as this obit notes, the ‘full measure of the family’s eccentric and provocative wit.’”

And author Philip Womack posted, “Saddened to hear of the death of Alexander Waugh, who was a big presence in the life of Literary Review when I worked there.”

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.