Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, dies aged 89

Harper Lee , whose 1961 novel To Kill a Mockingbird became a national institution and the defining text on the racial troubles of the American deep south, has died at the age of 89.
Lee, or Nelle as she was known to those close to her, had lived for several years in a nursing home less than a mile from the house in which she had grown up in Monroeville, Alabama - the setting for the fictional Maycomb of her famous book.
To Kill a Mockingbird, her 1961 epic narrative about small-town lawyer Atticus Finch's battle to save the life of a black resident threatened by a racist mob, sold more than 40 million copies around the world and earned her a Pulitzer prize.