Evelyn Graham Irons (17 June 1900 – 3 April 2000)[1] was a Scottish journalist, the first female war correspondent to be decorated with the French Croix de Guerre.
[1] Irons's career in journalism began at the Daily Mail, where the editor assigned her to the beauty page even though she herself had never worn makeup.
[2] At the Evening Standard she edited the "women's interest" pages, but when World War II broke out she informed the news editor "From now on I'm working for you.
[6] In 1954 she broke a news embargo on the overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán by hiring a mule to take her to Chiquimula while other journalists, forbidden to cross the border, waited in a bar in Honduras.
[2] According to biographer Victoria Glendinning, in 1931 Irons went as editor of the Daily Mail women's page to interview Sackville-West at Sissinghurst where she was designing and shaping the famous gardens.
When McSweeney and Irons moved to Brewster, New York, in 1952, they rented the cottage to several tenants, including the American cookbook writer Sylvia Vaughn Thompson.