Hail and farewell
Icon of my youth and several decades of adulthood, Katharine Whitehorn has died aged 93, having had Alzheimers for some years (I think I read a piece a few years ago by her son about deciding to put her in full-time nursing care).
I devoured her columns as they came out in The Observer, and in later years have accumulated what I think is the definitive collection of the consolidated volumes of these as they were published over the years. I also have (in common with many of my generation and after) her famous or infamous Cooking in a Bedsitter (1961). I don't think I still use any of these recipes, but there are still insights in the text that are cherishable: e.g. One of the most carefully-prepared meals of my life provoked several appreciative remarks from the man in question about "those unplanned, carefree, golden days that sometimes just happen". Hah!
This, like many other of Whitehorn's apercus, demonstrates her piercing insights into problems that are still, alas, Problems, in days when, alas, it is the custom of The Present to assume that women were all contented 50s housewives....
I did, once, meet her very fleetingly. She had been giving a talk at, or in connection with, what was then, I think still The Fawcett Library at London Guildhall University over at Whitechapel, and I encountered her in the ladies' loo afterwards, washing our hands, but was too awestruck to do more than express civil appreciation of her talk and work more generally.
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