[1] She spent three seasons working in theatres in Windsor and Bristol before joining BBC Radio as a Talks Producer, where she rose to become Editor of Woman's Hour, a position she held until 1967.
[3] The features producer Piers Plowright described her as "tactful but firm ... never a hair out of place, always elegant but with steel running through her".
She described Radio 4 as providing "Surprise, through different perspectives on life through satire, poetry, storytelling, songs, argument, defining ideas, contact with opinion formers, writers, scientists, historians, philosophers and imaginative stimulus through works of art, music, drama, literature.
[8] She left school in 1943 to study an English degree at the University of Oxford, at the same time and place as Margaret Thatcher.
At university, she joined the drama society, with Harold Hanbury, taking part in a production of the Taming of the Shrew, as Bianca Minola.