She wrote for a wide range of papers, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times and The Independent, particularly about asylum, immigration and human rights issues.
At the end of World War II, Colin became head of the section and was involved in reading the terms of surrender to Admiral Karl Dönitz (Hitler's successor) in Flensburg.
[5][6][7] McFadyean's mother, Marion, was a German-Jewish refugee and artist from the prominent Dresden banking family who fled to England from Nazi Germany in 1937.
During World War II, she worked for a unit, forging documents for use behind enemy lines, but would later earn her living in everything from picture restoration to garden design.
"[15][16] She then joined her elder sister at the former Cranborne Chase School, near Tisbury, Wiltshire, and later graduated from the University of Leeds with a first-class BA degree in English in 1974, followed by an MA.
She also contributed to many magazines and organisations, including The Guardian Weekly, The Sunday Times Magazine, Times Higher Education,[41] New Society, New Statesman, City Limits, Company, London Review of Books, Granta, openDemocracy,[42] Bureau of Investigative Journalism,[43] Honey, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle,[4] and The Oldie (for the latter writing a column called "Pearls of Wisdom").
[55] McFadyean also interviewed for the paper British actress Julie Christie,[56] Kurdish activist Sheri Laizer,[57] and Lisa Taylor,[58] one of the two sisters wrongly imprisoned for the murder of Alison Shaughnessy.
[67] McFadyean was herself interviewed by the British historian and espionage writer Helen Fry in relation to her parents' top-secret World War II past.
[68] McFadyean also highlighted other issues, such as foreign prisoners in British jails,[69][70] the detention and deportation of child migrants,[71][72] and whether Gulf War syndrome in soldiers[73] was the result of exposure to chemical warfare agents.
[81] In episode 12 of Did You See...?, she reviewed the British television film The Vision (1988) which starred Dirk Bogarde who uncovers sinister motives behind a new satellite TV channel.
[83] McFadyean worked on The Lost Boy – part of the Cutting Edge series, about the disappearance of British toddler Ben Needham, which she repeatedly returned to in radio[84] and print,[85][86][87] broadcast by Channel 4 on 10 March 1997.
[91][92][93] McFadyean co-wrote, with Nick Davies, The Boy Business (Season 1, Episode 98) of the Network First documentary about British paedophiles who prey on homeless and vulnerable children, broadcast by ITV on 26 March 1997.
[97][98] McFadyean's BBC Radio 4 work included Thirty Years and More, a five-part series on couples who have been together for three decades and more, produced by Bob Dickinson and first broadcast from 20 to 24 June 2005.
[101] Five months prior to the first broadcast, McFadyean had written an article about long-term relationships in The Guardian: "When people who have been together a long time talk about what has kept them so, there is usually something there you'd call love.
[3][115][116] She wrote an evocative and picturesque travelogue about their trip to his native New Zealand to usher in the new millennium when she reviewed the Aucklander Charlotte Grimshaw's debut crime novel, Provocation (1999), and second upcoming novel, Guilt (2000), for The Guardian.
[119][120][121] The opening lines were sampled from the idyllic Swallows and Amazons (1974)[120][122] British film adaptation of the 1930 children's adventure novel of the same name by The Guardian journalist-turned-novelist Arthur Ransome.
The album was certified gold on 25 July 2003 by the British Phonographic Industry for shipments exceeding 100,000 copies,[123] and nominated the same year for the Mercury Prize.
In 2011, she wrote about the charity's clients in The Guardian: "You would never guess that these youngsters have been trafficked, caught up in wars, forced to be child soldiers, seen their parents murdered, been betrayed by them or never even known them.
"[125][126][127][128] McFadyean also collaborated with Fran Robertson in 2015 on the short film Ade’s Story – part of the charity's Baobab Voices interview series, about the trafficking of children in the UK.
By contrast, she had been treated with patience, respect and empathy (even when she had been difficult) by the NHS: "My treatment has been delivered by people whose medical expertise is underpinned by something that feels, dare I say it, like a kind of love.