FELIX Dennis, the entrepreneur publisher who was the driving force behind the Alne Wood Park natural burial ground in Great Alne, has died.

A statement from his website reads: “We are deeply saddened to announce that Felix Dennis passed away yesterday surrounded by his loved ones. After a long and painful battle with cancer, Felix died peacefully at his home in Dorsington, aged 67.”

Mr Dennis came to fame as one of the editors on the underground alternative magazine ‘Oz’ which was involved in a celebrated obscenity trial in 1971, where he and co-editor Jim Anderson were acquitted on appeal after initially being found guilty and sentenced to harsh jail terms.

He later became a highly-successful magazine publisher with responsibility for such titles as ‘Viz’, ‘Fortean Times’ and ‘Bizarre’ as well as ‘Maxim’ and ‘Stuff’, and forged a successful second career as a poet.

Alcester residents will be most familiar with Mr Dennis as the guiding force behind the Forest of Dennis, a plantation of more than a million native saplings near Great Alne, and more recently, the controversial plans to create the Alne Wood Park natural burial ground, an 85-acre area of forest off Spernal Lane, with space for 50,000 internments.