The self-deprecating playwright and diarist Simon Gray lost his long fight against lung cancer yesterday at the age of 71.

“It's the passing of a very big talent,” said the actor Edward Fox, who starred in three of his plays.

Gray explored the trials and tribulations of intellectuals in more than 30 plays for stage and television. His dramas included Butley, Unnatural Pursuits and Quartermaine's Terms. Many were directed by his close friend Harold Pinter and many starred the late Alan Bates.

Recalling the premiere of Quartermaine's Terms as “one of the great moments of one's life”, Fox said: “We all thought it was a great play that would last through time. I believe that today. It's a classic.”

Simon Gray and his Smoking Diaries

At 71 and having been diagnosed with lung cancer, playwright Simon Gray has given up on giving up smoking

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He said of Gray's talent: “He had a very individual form of humour, mixing it with pathos at the same time, which is very Chekhovian. I don't mean to compare the two because they're not comparable. But they were writing the same thing, where life passes from moment to moment, between a mixture of humour and tears.”

In April, Gray, who was for many years a lecturer in English at Queen Mary, University of London, had spoken in an interview with The Times of his refusal to give up smoking despite the cancer. “I have a tumour in my lung,” he said. “Absolutely certainly, one way or another, I'm coming up to the last cigarette.”

A habit that had begun when he was aged 7, it eventually peaked at 65 cigarettes a day, despite aneurysms and prostate cancer. His volumes of witty memoirs, The Smoking Diaries and The Last Cigarette, reflected on his efforts to give up. A final edition of his diaries has been completed and was to be published later this year.

This year he gave up trying to give up, fearing that quitting itself might kill him. Drink was another weakness. His idea of cutting down was restricting himself to three daily bottles of champagne rather than four.

Gray was particularly scathing of attempts to ban lighting up on stage as part of the recent outlawing of smoking in public places. He condemned it as “grotesque ... a kind of mass hysteria”.

Ronald Harwood, the playwright, said: “I'm terribly upset. He was a very close friend. I shall miss him for the rest of my life.” Christopher Hampton, another leading writer, said: “I was a great admirer of his particular sense of humour. Butley was a very important play when it first came out, a genuinely new style. Lately, this reinvention of himself with these wonderful diaries has been heartening.”