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Katharine Whitehorn
Katharine Whitehorn, the Observer writer, who has died aged 92. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer
Katharine Whitehorn, the Observer writer, who has died aged 92. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

‘Wise, clever and kind, Katharine Whitehorn made it easier for all of us who followed her’

This article is more than 3 years old

The Observer writer and Fleet Street veteran, who has died aged 92, blazed a trail for women in journalism

Stylish, stimulating and life-affirming, Katharine Whitehorn, the Observer writer and broadcaster who helped shape modern British journalism, was mourned by readers and former colleagues at the weekend.

Born in Hendon, London, in 1928, the columnist, the first woman to be given such a job at this newspaper, had been living with Alzheimer’s disease. She moved to a care home in north London in 2018 and was recently diagnosed with Covid-19, although it is not clear if this contributed to her death on Friday at the age of 92.

Her elder son, Bernard Lyall, visited in her final hours and read aloud to her. “She was calm, I am pleased to say,” he said. “I had brought a copy of Winnie-the-Pooh in with me, among other books, because she and my father always read that to each other when they were ill. And I told her if she needed to go now, she could.”

Lyall said one of the few good things to come from his mother’s illness had been a “renewed, increased appreciation of the respect and affection felt for her by so many people”.

“She seems to have touched very many people very deeply, and my brother Jake and I are privileged to feel the reflected glow of their regard,” he added.

An Observer Magazine cover from May 1968 featuring Katharine Whitehorn’s piece, Social bloomers and how to get out of them. Photograph: Photo Duffy © Duffy Archive

The irony of Whitehorn’s legacy, and one she anticipated with relish, is that as a writer who pushed against the professional restrictions of being female, she will chiefly be remembered for writing about cooking and the domestic realm. In fact, she did this in a spirit of reform, glad to turn on their head the crippling expectations of perfect housewifery in the name of good humour and sanity.

Among those to pay tribute were Observer food writer Jay Rayner, son of Claire Rayner, who said: “Farewell to dear Kath Whitehorn. A brilliant journalist, without whom so many of today’s columnists wouldn’t exist. Wise, witty, mischievous.

“I knew her first as my mum’s mate; later she became a colleague, and I got to breathe the same newspaper office air.”

Edie Reilly, who worked with Whitehorn at the Observer for more than 20 years as a secretary, said: “She was a wonderful friend and boss. I remember shaking like a leaf when I applied to work for her, because I really admired her.”

Writer and feminist Yvonne Roberts was also a friend and fan. Describing her as “dry, wry, insightful, funny and honest”, she praised the “great charm” with which Whitehorn “removed enough bars of the gilded cage so that those who came after her could slip through more easily”.

Writing two years ago, novelist Jilly Cooper said of Whitehorn: “Everyone grabbed the Observer to read her column on a Sunday morning … My ambition as a young journalist was completely to be her.”

Observer writer Rachel Cooke, a devotee who interviewed Whitehorn, saw her as “a meteor: clever, funny, compassionate, insightful, beautiful” and a representative of “those brave postwar women who took self-determination to dizzying new heights, and in doing so made it easier for all who would follow”.

Whitehorn, who worked for the Observer in several roles over her 60-year Fleet Street career, was educated at Roedean, the exclusive private school near Brighton, and at Glasgow High School, before going on to study at Cambridge. Her background likely gave her the confidence needed to take on the male bastion of journalism. It was also responsible for one of Whitehorn’s most memorable characteristics: her voice. Cooke described its deep register and clipped vowels as “two parts Diana Rigg to one part James Mason” and it became familiar to listeners to her regular essays on BBC Radio 4’s Point of View.

Whitehorn began, conventionally enough, in fashion journalism in the late 1950s and some of the most alluring and enduring images of her come from a Picture Post photoshoot. Photographer Bert Hardy’s image of Whitehorn pondering by a fire even went on to be used in an ad for Lucozade. She worked for the Observer from 1963 to 1997, returning in later years to file regular copy for the Observer Magazine. She also wrote a popular “agony aunt” column for Saga magazine until 2016.

Katharine Whitehorn in Hyde Park, London, February 1956. She was photographed by Bert Hardy for a Picture Post story about loneliness in London. Photograph: Bert Hardy/Getty Images

In both her journalism and books, which include the celebrated Cooking in a Bedsitter in 1961, she framed common problems in a new light, stripped of sentiment. Writing honestly in her 2007 autobiography Selective Memory, Whitehorn described the days that followed her wedding in 1958 to the thriller writer Gavin Lyall, her beloved husband of 45 years and father of her two sons. Sharing a first home together, the newlyweds’ tempers frayed: “We were nastier to each other in that week than ever before or later.”

She also recalled the shock of finding a note written by her late mother, Edith, a Glaswegian, as she sorted her possessions shortly after the the second world war. In a list of the pros and cons of having another baby, on the credit side she had written “Another chance to bring up a girl”, countered with the line, “but it might turn out no better this time”.

According to her son Bernard she felt “friendless and unappreciated in childhood” although she came to have a huge circle of friends.

This year Lyall auctioned the Danish writing desk his mother customarily worked at to raise money for an Alzheimer’s charity. In her autobiography she reveals that in her youth a desk was a luxury. “It amazes me now to think that all my articles until 1965 were written sitting on our bed with a typewriter, mostly to the sound of 78rpm gramophone records playing on the side,” she wrote.

In 1983, to mark the Observer’s 10,000th edition, Whitehorn wrote the introduction to a celebration of the newspaper’s history and remembered how carefully writers had to handle former editor David Astor’s views on women’s role in life. He “felt strongly about motherhood; so much so that he found it extremely difficult to hire women at all”, she wrote. “For if they were single, or separated, they were probably not typical, and certainly not good for, Our Women Readers. Yet if they did have children, why weren’t they home looking after them?”

Lyall, whose father died in 2003, spoke this weekend in gratitude for the stability his parents provided and the value they put on love over money. “Growing up, I and my brother were always aware there was a public side to my mother … as if there was a public road running through the garden. We would look on with bafflement, occasionally with resentment, but mostly with pride.”

A small family funeral and cremation is planned, with a larger memorial service when possible.

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