Update | Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney dies aged 74

Seamus Heaney, one of the world's top poets and winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for literature, has died aged 74 after a short illness, his family said yesterday.

Born and raised in Northern Ireland, Heaney was renowned for his mastery of Irish and Gaelic sources, as well as Old English, the Anglo-Saxon tongue from which he translated in 1999 a much-praised version of the medieval epic Beowulf.

Irish President Michael Higgins - himself a published poet - said Heaney's contribution "to the republics of letters, conscience, and humanity was immense".

"I have described Seamus Heaney as a national treasure, but he was an international treasure, a colossus of literature," said Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness.

The leader of Northern Ireland's Ulster Unionist Party, Mike Nesbitt, described Heaney as a man of global significance.

"We all remember how US president Bill Clinton chose Heaney's great phrase about when 'hope and history rhyme' from Heaney's play The Cure At Troy in his speech in Londonderry, and went on to use it for the title of his book detailing his vision of the US in the 21st century," he said.