Very nice, generous tribute in the Economist:

Bad times for his party, the union, Britain’s place in Europe: Mr Kennedy’s death speaks to all these. Yet for the many who mourn him, it is above all dreadfully sad, because he was delightful, and in fact this was the main reason for his success. He was, extraordinarily in politics, without malice. He was never, despite his remarkable precociousness, pompous. His jokes, which were frequent, were usually aimed at himself, the institution he served, or both.

Narrating a television documentary on the House of Commons last year, he glanced up, on camera, at a mosaic of St Andrew that towers over Central Lobby. The patron saint of Scots, he quipped, had been positioned to signal the way to the bar. Though he was a political insider—an MP at 23, for goodness sake—Mr Kennedy’s plain good humour always suggested he had a foot in that ruder soil, the real world, which matters most. And that, O politicians, is why he was loved.

Amen.