Tributes have been paid to a “remarkable” poet and playright who has died aged 91.

Dr Dannie Abse, who lived in Golders Green, was made a CBE in the 2012 New Year Honours for his work.

He was born in Cardiff and studied medicine in Wales and Kings College London, before qualifying as a doctor in 1950.

In 2005, his wife, Joan, a distinguished art historian, was killed in a car crash and he wrote a book called The Presence, which chronicles their 50 years of marriage.

Gerrard Roots, curator of the former Church Farmhouse Museum, got to know Dr Abse in 1998 when he set up an exhibition to mark Dr Abse's 75th birthday.

He said “In person was like his poems: humane, wryly observant, and unfailingly interested in, and engaged, with the world. His fine poem 'Mysteries' ends: 'I start with the visible/ and am startled with the visible'.

“He never stopped. He was still revising over the last few months his 'New and Collected Poems' which will now, sadly, be published posthumously.

"Dannie Abse's death is a great loss - to literature, to Wales, and indeed, to our own borough of Barnet. He will be much missed."

Throughout his career Dr Abse wrote and edited more than 16 books of poetry and fiction. He has also published an autobiography called Goodbye Twentieth Century.

Dr Abse was also president of the Poetry Society from 1978 to 1992 and a Fellow of the Welsh Academy.

Mr Roots added: “His poems were not performance pieces: his splendid readings gave a further dimension to the verse, but they always made the listener want to read the poems again, with fresh eyes.”