AN OXFORD composer as co-written a musical about the imagined assassination of controversial Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins.

Matt Winkworth has written The Assassination of Katie Hopkins with his long-term writing partner Chris Bush.

A synopsis for the show released yesterday says: "A shocking crime divides the nation. Fingers are pointed, sides are drawn, facts are hard to come by. Why did this happen? How do we move on? What must we remember?

"It's easy to have an opinion online, safe behind the anonymity of a keyboard, just like, share and subscribe. But as the digital mob polish their pitchforks, the world starts to question just how free should free speech be."

The show will be premiered at the Theatr Clwyd in Mold, North Wales, on April 20, 2018, and run until May 12.

Mr Winkworth, 32, who lives on a narrowboat in Oxford, was the 2016-2017 artist-in-residence at The Oxford Playhouse.

The former pupil at John Mason secondary school, Abingdon, is also currently co-musical director of Abingdon Community Choir.

In 2014 he and Miss Bush, who is originally from York, won a £12,000 national songwriting competition to pen a musical based on a modern adaptation of Homer's Odyssey.

Ms Hopkins, has repeatedly courted controversy in recent years with her columns for the Mail.

Retweeting the news about Mr Winkworth's musical, she added simply: "The Assassination of Katie Hopkins. An invitation. In every sense."