Wildlife expert dies in digger accident

 A television wildlife expert has died after a digger accident on his farmland.

Johnny Kingdom – who specialised in his local area of Exmoor and north Devon – died on Thursday night. He was 79.

Emergency services were called to reports that a digger had rolled over in a field on Kingdom’s land. He was pronounced dead at the scene near Wadham Cross in Knowstone, Devon. Before becoming a film-maker, Kingdom worked as a farmer, forestry worker, gravedigger and poacher.

In 2006, the BBC screened a 10-part series about his life entitled Johnny Kingdom: A Year On Exmoor. He was hailed as “one of the last true characters of rural Britain” and his family said: “A legend had been lost.”