Linda Adato (née Fabler) attended North London Collegiate School in the 1950s, during which time the new Drawing School, overlooking the pond, was opened. She was taught and nurtured by her art teachers: Peggy Angus, Moy Keightley, and Gladys Anderson. Upon leaving NLCS, she attended Hornsey Art School before moving to the USA where she developed her career as a printmaker, with exhibitions around the world. Adato was the president of The Society of American Graphic Artists between 2007 and 2010. She was the third woman to hold this position since the society’s creation in 1915.

Feminist, human rights campaigner, and child welfare advocate Ruth Adler (née Oppenheimer) died in February 1994.

She was born in 1944 to parents who came to Britain as refugees from Germany in the 1930s. After attending NLCS, she studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Somerville College, Oxford, and then an MA in Philosophy at the University of London. Moral philosophy remained an abiding interest and she subsequently obtained a doctorate in jurisprudence from Edinburgh University.

In 1974, Adler was a founder of Scottish Women’s Aid, after which she turned her energy to establishing the Scottish Child Law Centre. In 1991, she founded Amnesty International’s Scotland office. She was a magistrate and a Justice of the Peace.

Adler’s obituary in The Independent describes her three passionate concerns as, for justice, for children and for her family.

Gillian Lincoln was born during an air raid in 1941 and spent the early nights of her life sleeping in a Morrison shelter in her grandparents’ dining room. Having survived that, and rationing, at the age of eleven she won a scholarship to North London and never looked back. Of her school days, she said that she didn’t shine academically as much as she might have done as she spent too much time playing the piano. However, on a school exchange close by Lake Annecy she became a fluent French speaker and learned how to sail, a sport she was to pursue after gaining her psychology degree at Brunel, and spent a post-Uni gap year as a cook-mate on classic sailing boats.

Eventually, Gill was to find her true metier in educational psychology. She spent ten years doing adolescent counselling and guidance, discovering along the way how dyslexia prevented bright youngsters from reading and writing. She volunteered at her local dyslexia unit, in Watford, took the newly introduced national specialist teacher qualification and passed with distinction.  She became the Watford Unit’s resident psychologist, rose from course tutor in specific learning difficulties [SLD] at UCL to External Assessor and, eventually, became the Chief Examiner for the SLD teacher training courses, involving a great deal of travelling around the country which she thoroughly enjoyed.

Gill had a knack for putting people at their ease, whether nervous children, anxious parents, trainee teachers or aggrieved exam candidates. Her lecturing style was captivating, laced with personal anecdotes. She wrote a ground breaking paper on access arrangements for pupils with special educational needs which, in 2000, became the benchmark document for subsequent publications from the Joint Council for Qualifications. She wrote several books on dyslexia, on music and the problems for dyslexics, and co-wrote a language and literacy handbook for teachers. In retirement, Gill supported Playskill, a local charity working with pre-school children with special needs and their families.

She met her husband Oliver through sailing, in 1970, on a cruising association event, and – despite Oliver’s various tests of Gill’s seawomanship, which included jumping overboard, leaving her alone at the tiller – were soon engaged and were married later that year. Gill and Oliver took enormous pride in their two children, Emma and William, and four adored grandchildren followed, Oly, Milly, Chloe and George. After Oliver’s tragically early, sudden death in 2004 Gill worked for a while, but then retired and built a cottage in her former garden where she joined the local choir and began another round of travels, singing Messiah in the Forbidden City in Beijing, Mozart’s Requiem in the Salzburg Cathedral, Pslestrina in St. Mark’s, Venice and Verdi’s Requiem in the Festival Hall.

Friendship was of great importance to Gill and she had many, many friends. Marion [Kings] and Liane [Gore] she met at North London and they went on lunching together in a schoolgirl ‘gang of six’ up until Gill’s death. Two of her closest companions through life were Georgie and Yolanda, with whom she travelled widely, enjoying choir tours, the ballet and opera.

The last few months of illness had not been her plan but, as all her friends will bear witness, she remained positive and as active and creative in her mind as she had ever been. We all miss her so very much.

Barbara Ann Barrett (née Presswood) died on 3 June 2015. After North London Collegiate School, she won the Senior Scholarship to read Physics at Somerville College, Oxford. Postgraduate work took her to Columbia University and then as a professor at San Francisco State College until 1967.

Barbara leaves behind three children and will be remembered for her kindness, gentleness and ability to smile through many challenges life threw at her.

The whole school community was shocked to hear about the sudden death of Ruth Betts (Biology teacher at NLCS from 1981 to 2019) in July 2024. Ruth died in a tragic hiking accident in the Scottish highlands, not far from Glencoe.

Ruth was a highly knowledgeable and enthusiastic Biologist and her enthusiasm, both for her subject and her love of imparting her knowledge, spilled over, not just in her lessons, but in every activity she took part in, whether it was a walk in the Chilterns with some friends or a Duke of Edinburgh Gold training session.

It is impossible to list all the numerous contributions that Ruth made to the school during her 38 years of service. She joined as a teacher of Biology during the time of Madeleine McLauchlan, was promoted to Head of Biology under Joan Clanchy in 1988 and in 2011 during Bernice McCabe’s time, she became the Duke of Edinburgh co-ordinator. These are some of the most significant roles that she took on but more interesting are all the things that do not come with a prestigious title or extra remuneration. She loved being in the classroom, she never wanted to take on responsibility that led her away from teaching and her love of the natural world manifested itself in so many ways, providing excellent stories for ONLs to discuss over their WhatsApp groups.  Members of her form group from the 80s have been discussing her animated explanations of enzyme actions using coloured plastic on an O.H.P., her peristalsis demonstration using a pair of tights and ping pong balls and her complete straightforwardness and sense of humour.

Knowing that she was practically part of the fabric of the building when she retired, Ruth put together a scrapbook that she wrote over a period of about a year. She talks about her experiences of Canon’s Follies in the 1980s, the introduction of computers, Founder’s day in 1982 and even describes how Ruth herself was the first ever NLCS Health and Safety Officer in 1986!  It is a wonderful souvenir for us to remember Ruth and remember what the school was like over the thirty eight years of her service. In 2019 she was also interviewed by three students who asked her about her career in the school, what it was like being by far the youngest member of staff when she joined and how the school has changed. There is a special container in the archives with her name on it filled with photos, Duke of Edinburgh scrapbooks, extracts from her own mark book and register and a list of books she borrowed from the library.

In her retirement Ruth was making the most of every second, she qualified as a Mountain Leader in 2017 and since then climbed nearly all of the Wainwrights in the Lake district, walked the Cumbrian Way, climbed over forty Munros in Scotland and led countless ramblers groups, local to her home and beyond. She was a leader with HF holidays and led many groups of all walking levels all over the UK. She and her husband, Geoff, had started to adventure abroad on walking holidays in more recent years.

Ruth adored her family. Her husband and two children often accompanied and helped on Duke of Edinburgh expeditions and the family welcomed two new additions recently, two grandchildren. For her family the loss of Ruth has been devastating.

Ruth’s students remember her as a brilliant, committed and hilarious teacher, a tireless expedition leader and a person for whom teaching was a calling, not a job, who gave herself wholeheartedly and unselfishly to every lesson, fieldwork study, project, expedition and event to help them build their futures. The impact she has had on the lives of so many people is something that we can all be thankful for even though she has left us too soon.

Helen Rice

Rosemary Charles (née Hubert) will be remembered for her striking blue eyes and her maturity. She played Mrs Linde in a school production of ‘A Doll’s House’. She did not go to university but succeeded in business rather like Mrs Linde, who was the foil to the trapped Nora in the play. Rosemary was a gifted cook. She moved to the country and raised prize-winning rare cattle. She served on the board

 of the local hospital. She married gynaecologist, Mr Anthony Charles. They had three daughters, one of whom suffered a tragic road accident. Among her grandchildren, Daisy is carrying on the family interest in art, becoming a specialist in Canadian art, and working in New York. 

Statuesque headmistress with an immaculate dress sense, an objection to exams and a steadfast belief in single-sex education 

Joan Clanchy, headmistress of North London Collegiate School (NLCS), had no affection for the exam system which put her school at the top of the league tables. When the A* at GCSE was introduced in 1994, she lamented that “we do not need the extra spur. It will lead to nervousness and cramming, which it will be very hard to resist.” 

She felt that the British education system had an obsession with exams, which not only unfairly privileged students in schools like hers, who could be coached to attain straight As, but also forced teachers to chase results instead of following their pedagogical instincts. 

In 1991 she was made a member of the National Curriculum Council (NCC), where she argued against the Grad- grinds who wanted to introduce exams in year 9. She resigned her role in 1993 in protest at the English curriculum drawn up by the council, at the request of the education secretary John Patten. In accordance with his wishes, the new curriculum renewed focus on grammar, spelling and punctuation, requiring seven-year-olds to know how to use capital letters and full stops, 11-year-olds to use commas correctly, and 16-year-olds commas and semi-colons. 

“I pepper my writing with commas,” Clanchy said. “I am a real colon enthusiast. But you build up punctuation gradually through children’s writing, not by teaching the use of the comma at a certain stage.” The proposal which most rankled her, however, was that students should be marked down in oral examinations for speaking in dialect. 

In her letter of resignation from the NCC to Patten, she wrote that “the dominant aim has become a curriculum designed for tests, and the result is a model of English teaching which is barren and anti-intellectual”. It was as if, she continued, “the Highway Code had been narrowed down to instructions on the three-point turn”. 

A focus on rote learning was the antithesis of the ethos she followed as headmistress of NLCS, where she set aside time on Thursdays for students to study subjects outside the curriculum and question guests of the school. She also set up a “Young Enterprise” scheme, in which she encouraged her students to “sell each other junk”. She assumed headship of the school in 1986, at a time when the idea of single-sex education was out of fashion. Many boys’ schools, such as Westminster, had begun to accept girls into the sixth form, while the finances of private schools in general were precarious. Clanchy believed that single-sex schools such as NLCS afforded girls the chance to build up a confidence that they might not acquire elsewhere. One of her first acts as headmistress was to abolish domestic sciences, which she regarded as sexist, and she told her girls that while it was impossible for a woman to “have it all”, it was also important to try. 

In their attempts to do so, her students could hardly follow a more confident role model than Clanchy herself, who had always believed she was “one of nature’s head girls”. Statuesque and immaculately dressed, she could assume a gaze that one staff member described as “not hostile, but not warm either, simply a look which showed she was weighing up the comment she had heard. It could be disarming but it was pure Clanchy.” 

Yet as well as cutting such an imposing figure, she was approachable and believed that the main job of a teacher was to pay attention generously, telling her staff to “cast your bread upon the waters, and it will come back as sandwiches”. 

Her desire to spend lavishly to provide the best education for her pupils conflicted with her reluctance to raise fees. After retiring in 1997 she became the chairwoman of governors at St Mary and St John, a state primary school in Oxford, taking pleasure in organising a chess club for the pupils. 

Joan Milne was born in Glasgow in 1939, the daughter of Leslie and Mary (née Berry). Her father had left school at 14 to work as a barrow boy in the Glasgow food market, eventually becoming an auctioneer then setting up his own business. Wishing to give Joan a start in life they did not have, but knowing little about private schools, her parents sent her to Park School for Girls in Glasgow, then St Hilda’s School for Girls in Stirlingshire. Unhappy at the latter, she heard friends talking about St Leonards, a girls’ school in St Andrews that modelled its curriculum on that of boys’ public schools in England to the point of making the girls play cricket on the windy Fife coast. She convinced her parents to let her go there, and after three years at the school she worked as an au pair in the Rheims home of the Heidsieck family of champagne makers. 

She studied history at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she became the president of the Junior Common Room and helped Paul Foot and Richard Ingrams to produce a magazine, Parson’s Pleasure. She was friends with a historian at Merton, Michael Clanchy, who enticingly was the owner of a car, but they did not get together until both had moved on to teacher training. They married in 1963 and had two children who survive them: James, a lawyer, and Kate, a teacher and writer. Michael died two weeks after his wife. 

Clanchy’s first teaching job was at Woodberry Down School in London. The family then moved to Glasgow, where Michael had been offered a lectureship in history at the university. With her weighty social conscience, Clanchy wished to stay in the state sector, though was told that Glasgow district council did not employ married women, so took up a post at her alma mater, Park School, instead. 

At the age of 36 she became the headmistress of St George’s School for Girls in Edinburgh, to which the family upped sticks. As they were leaving, their next door neighbour, the editor of The Glasgow Herald, ran a news story about how Michael would now have to commute to Glasgow for his wife’s convenience. He meant this as a friendly gesture, but Clanchy made sure he knew how inappropriate she thought it. 

Joan Clanchy, headmistress, was born on August 26, 1939. She died of lupus on January 15, 2021, aged 81. 

Originally published in The Times, 25 February 2021

Juliet died on 24th August 2022 aged 51.

She had a vibrant personality and was always resolute, even during the hardest times of her illness.  Indeed, included in her funeral instructions was the fact that all attendees needed to wear bright colours.  Those of you who spent time with Juliet will understand this.

Juliet really enjoyed her years at NLCS and always said that the school provided the best basis for her attitude towards life and work.  She was also very proud to have been presented a prize by Esther Rantzen, aged 11, for dressing up as a pea pod!

She went on to study at Manchester University and graduated with a 2:1 which then led to a career in commerce.  She was multi-talented – IT trainer, website manager/designer – a real creative talent.

Juliet became ill with sarcoidosis in 2005. This is a rare condition which causes small patches of swollen tissue, called granulomas, to develop on organs of the body. In Juliet’s case it affected her lungs to the extent that, latterly, she only had 50% lung capacity. In the last few years, she also developed pulmonary hypertension, lymphoma, myofascial pain syndrome and was on 24/7 oxygen. She had been shielding for over 900 days as she was immunosuppressed and feared getting Covid.

She bore her illness with bravery and fortitude although sometimes in extreme pain. Despite the deterioration in her health, she continued working and her husband, Gary, gave her incredible support.

Her courage remained.  In 2021, when barely able to walk she did a ‘Juliet marathon’ for Sarcoidosis UK to raise funds and awareness of the disease.  By walking 3,000 metres in 30 days – all she was capable of doing – she raised over £50,000 in sponsorship.  Awareness was raised too as she was featured on BBC, ITV, in national and local press, on Radio 5, LBC and she became the media go-to when questions of disability or shielding arose.

In 2022, she raised further funds by her ‘Hallway Challenge’, where she walked only 10 metres a day – a sign of her deteriorating health.  Her Just Giving pages are still receiving donations and in November 2022 she was awarded a posthumous certificate, given by local media, in recognition of her fundraising success.

After over two years of suffering from cancer, Lucy Diamond (Class of 1990) sadly passed away in February 2015. Lucy was a dressage and event rider, married to champion farrier Billy Crothers and mother to two daughters. She was determined to keep up competing alongside her cancer treatment and she went on to a Top 10 place at the national championships at Stoneleigh in September 2014.

Ann Fausset (née Sheard) sadly died two days before her 84th birthday, on January 1st, 2022. Ann left NLCS in 1956. She studied at Edinburgh University and then took a number of courses, including an MSc in Systemic Therapy in 1997. Ann married Shelley Fausset and moved to the USA for a few years. She started a group for her ONL friends when they reached 60, and their last reunion was in Harrogate in 2019. She sadly had a serious stroke in 2021 and died two weeks later. She will be dearly missed by her family, who looked after her well, and, of course, her ONL friends.

Cordelia joined the Junior School in 1986 and left the Senior School in 1997, where she had been very happy. She read Modern History at St Peter’s College, Oxford between 1998 and 2001 and studied Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London, receiving her MA in 2007. After being diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, in her early twenties, she devoted herself to raising public awareness of the illness – she featured in Stephen Fry’s BBC documentaries on manic depression in 2006 and 2016 as well as discussing her own experience on a number of radio programmes, and in magazine and newspaper articles. After Oxford, Cordelia joined Pollinger literary agents, where she worked for a couple of years. She then spent some fifteen years working at Eric Glass, a literary and theatrical agent – reading submitted manuscripts and selecting their actor clients for auditions. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 and, again, endeavoured to alert young women to the possibility of its early onset. She featured in a film for the Estee Lauder breast cancer awareness campaign in 2014 and discussed her own experience on BBC Woman’s Hour. Cordelia was happy to see her two books appear in 2021 – In Bloom is a semi-autobiographical novel about the teenage clubbing scene in the mid-90s, which describes the onset of bipolar disorder. Well Done is a memoir about her eight and a half years of cancer treatment – told with humour and honesty. She died on 8 January 2022 aged 42.

Margaret J Finch (nee Rodd) died on 19 April 2021. Legacy of a modernist architect. Throughout her career, Margaret touched the lives of thousands of children and families both in the UK and abroad. Having worked on numerous infrastructure projects in the post-war years. Prior to setting up her own practice with her husband Dickie, Margaret worked for the modernist architect Denys Lasdun (known for the likes of London’s Royal National Theatre). Notable projects she worked on included the Hallfield Estate project in Paddington, its school, now grade-II listed was once described as ‘one of the most inventive school designs put up since the war’. When Ghanaian Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah implemented his plan to speed up the rejuvenation of Accra and its outskirts with housing, schools and industrial infrastructure; it was Margaret who over oversaw the construction of a new village at Tema. Margaret and her architect husband eventually set up their own successful practice together in the 1950s and went on to work on a wide range of projects from schools, and private homes to public projects. Margaret’s obituary in the RIBA Journal can be found here.

It is with great sadness that I report the death of my mother Isobel Kissin (née Rubenstein) ONL 1936-40 in June 2020 at the age of 95 years. It marks the end of an era, obviously for our family for whom she was the matriarch, but also in connection with NLCS as the oldest of three generations of pupils – mother Isobel; daughter Joanna Atkin (née Kissin 1956-66); and granddaughter Tamara Atkin (1988-99).

Isobel left NLCS in 1940 following the evacuation of the school to Luton. She was then sent to relatives in Los Angeles, crossing the Atlantic on the RMS Scythia – on what was to be the last evacuation of children to make it across to safety and where she completed her secondary education graduating from University High School, Los Angeles before returning to the UK just before the end of the war.

She always looked back fondly on her time at school and was thrilled to have two succeeding generations follow in her footsteps, and I have particularly fond memories of the time the three of us attended the Founder’s Day service together.

Hilary King (née Presswood) died on 25 June 2015. After North London Collegiate School, Hilary went on to read Modern Languages at Somerville College, Oxford and completed a PGCE at York University. She had a very strong service ethic and did two years with VSO, taught French, Spanish and IT, and was very involved in Rotary, both in Norwich and overseas. Hilary is widely missed, especially by her family.

Bernice McCabe took-up her role as Headmistress of North London Collegiate School in September 1997, remaining in this position until September 2017, at which point she became an Educational Consultant whose work included being Director of International Schools and Educational Strategy for NLCS Enterprises. Sadly, only months into this new role, Bernice became ill and shortly afterwards was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, which on 18th February proved to have fatal consequences. 

Her educational career began after graduating from Bristol University. Bernice taught for sixteen years in mixed comprehensives in Bristol and London, including five years as Head of English and four as Deputy Head of The Heathland School in the London Borough of Hounslow. It was there, as she often recalled, that she saw how a successful school could change the lives of the children. Working with Geoffrey Samuel, its founding Head Teacher, the ambition to lead a school herself was sparked. In 1990, she was appointed Headmistress of Chelmsford County High School, a maintained grammar school, where she applied much of the ethos that she had developed at The Heathland School. Bernice appreciated how, through inspirational teaching, children could be excited by knowledge and how its acquisition could broaden their horizons and elevate their own ambitions. Bernice was a passionate advocate of the transformational power of education, that provides floors rather than ceilings for each child. 

During her twenty years as Headmistress of North London Collegiate School, Bernice sought to enrich the School’s curricular provision. She embedded teaching strategies that focused on a love of subject, and an appreciation that knowledge studied for its own sake is profoundly life enhancing and secures excellence for every child. Bernice was determined to develop within children the resilience and courage to ‘re-write the story’ in the face of adversity, whilst developing the self-confidence necessary to make a difference in the world.  

Under her leadership, NLCS expanded provision through the addition of the International Baccalaureate Diploma. This was an alternative programme of study to the more traditional A-Levels for its Sixth Formers and NLCS developed its range of partnerships with other schools in both the State and Private sectors. We also saw the completion of a number of inspirational, transformative architectural developments, including the long-dreamt of Performing Arts Centre.  

It was also under Bernice’s leadership that NLCS embarked upon its project of international franchising, spreading the values and aspirations of NLCS’s ambitious educational provision to schools around the globe. As Bernice said on numerous occasions, international links build an appreciation of what we all have in common and develop a better understanding of others, as well as a deeper awareness of each individual’s rich and unique cultural heritage. Bernice was determined that children build the confidence to take risks, including the risk of disappointment, and that they become ambitious for what they can give to others as well as what they can achieve for themselves.  NLCS Jeju opened in South Korea in September 2011, followed by NLCS Dubai in 2017, with two more scheduled to open in 2020 (Thailand and Singapore).  

In 2002, Bernice directed the first Prince of Wales Education Summer School, which offered state school teachers the opportunity to share and indulge in their love for their subjects, and hear from world-renowned experts in their respective fields. In 2006 the annual Summer Schools grew into The Prince’s Teaching Institute, which Bernice co-directed. By 2016, 14% of all Secondary Schools in England and Wales had sent a teacher to a PTI course, empowering 5,000 teachers to challenge and inspire their pupils, with over 520,000 children benefitting from a richer educational experience as a result. She also served on national education committees in both the maintained and independent sectors and had been a trustee of the British Skin Foundation. 

In an interview with The Telegraph in June 2017, Bernice reminisced on talking to a group of Sixth Formers in her office on first being appointed at NLCS, and asking them what they wanted from their Headmistress. One of the Big Six (a senior committee of six Year 12 students) said that she wanted to know that if she left school, went to university, had a career and also a family, that she didn’t need to feel guilty about having all of these things. Bernice recalled her response, saying, 

“I suppose the point I’ve always tried to make is that you can have it all, but not necessarily at the same time, and you won’t necessarily be able to be completely free of guilt or regret. Life is about making choices, and choice is wonderful… but with those choices, inevitably come regrets or feelings of guilt about what you haven’t done or aren’t doing.” 

Bernice would invariably offer similar words of wisdom year after year, drawing on her love of the timeless truth espoused in literature, at our annual Founder’s Day and Valedictory Assemblies. 

After undergoing successful neurosurgery in February 2018, Bernice received the life-extending drug ipilimumab privately at University College London Hospital, with, initially, promising results. Thereafter, and up until her death, she was a powerful and public campaigner to make immunotherapy available for brain tumours on the NHS. Indeed, NLCS held a fundraising day in October 2018 to raise money for Brain Tumour Research, and anyone wishing to donate to this will find details here. (www.justgiving.com/campaigns/charity/tnba/immunotherapy#) 

Bernice passed away in the early hours of Monday 18th February 2019 having been surrounded by her family and friends in recent months. We mourn her passing whilst celebrating the fact that NLCS is a richer institution for her inspirational leadership. 

Mr Dafydd James-Williams

Norma Rinsler belonged to a generation who paved the way for modern women to be both mothers and successful professionals.

Early on, she balanced a young family with teaching: eventually at King’s College London.  At that time, even clearly brilliant academic women were not promoted – it took years to gain tenure.  However, a new head of department brought a rapid rise to Reader, then Professor.  Her administrative and personnel skills meant that she became vice-principal of the College and then Dean of the University Faculty of Arts.

Her interests were wide: a major achievement was to secure for King’s the archive of the Adam International Review – priceless original artwork and manuscripts by key figures of the 20th C.  She sub edited Modern Poetry in Translation.  The French Government named Norma Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiquies in 1989 – for contributions to French culture.

Translation: she loved the right word in the right place, the way a teacher can fade out as the pupil becomes more confident.  Translation: a supremely intellectual, yet personal and generous act, to which one brings one’s whole self, but as invisibly as possible.  Norma was a generous, persistent and very skilled teacher.  When my father had a stroke at 70 she spent hours with him, day after day, teaching and encouraging him until he spoke and walked again.

Their contented retirement meant holidays in their caravan.  They were always avid concert-goers.  After my father’s death in 2019 she remained strong and incisive, completing the Times crossword daily and offering her quietly passionate love to her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  Sharp-minded until the last day, she died peacefully on 10th May, 2023.  Alas.

Miriam Rinsler

My cousin Carol Smith, who has died aged 84, was a literary agent and author best known for her thrillers Kensington Court (1996) and Unfinished Business (2000).

Born in London to Winifred (nee Mapleston), a teacher, and David Smith, a businessman, Carol attended the North London Collegiate, after which she could not wait to get straight to work so took a shorthand course and flew to New York at the height of the Mad Men advertising era. Funny, charming, clever and ambitious she quickly found her first job with the publisher Arthur Rosenthal, who took her under his wing and moved her around every department of his company.

After a stint as a story editor for MGM she returned to London in 1965 and joined AP Watt literary agency. She built up a wide friendship circle of authors and publishers, including Arianna Huffington, Bernard Levin, Edward de Bono, Stephen King, Roy Hattersley and Miriam Margolyes. In the early 1970s she sealed her first million-dollar deal and celebrated by buying herself a large diamond ring. Another celebratory purchase was a luxurious wolf jacket and, with a wardrobe full of Armani, she was always extremely stylish.

A selection of Carol Smith’s thrillers, which she dubbed ‘creepy weepies’

After making a lot of money for her employers and authors she launched the Carol Smith literary agency and bought a large rambling flat in Kensington, where she liked nothing more than bringing together a disparate group to introduce young editors to their opposite numbers and authors to each other. She had an endless curiosity about people, and what made them tick, and took that with her when she reinvented herself as a novelist after selling her agency in 1998.

Her expertise as an agent advising authors on how to create tantalising storylines meant that her own stylish brand of blood-curdling thrillers were an instant hit. She even invented her own genre: the “creepy weepy”.

Susan Fletcher, the former deputy managing director of Hodder & Stoughton and a longtime friend, said: “Carol was a glamorous presence, with her blond hair, a husky voice that spoke of a 50-a-day cigarette habit – though in fact she never smoked – and the diamond rings she awarded herself for every mega deal. But that flamboyance came alongside a terrifically perceptive eye for talent and formidable negotiating skills.”

She is survived by a niece, Asta, and nephew, Karl.

Rosemary Trevor sadly passed away in December 2021. Rosemary had a busy life. She ended up in Nairn, Scotland, where she had three hotels. A fellow hotelier described not only her determination and boundless energy but her kindness and generosity. She received the OBE for her work on the Welfare to Work scheme in 2006. Rosemary was also a keen horserider. She was a successful junior showjumper and after her children finished competing, she became a judge for the British Show Pony Society. She judged many prestigious shows, including Royal Windsor and the Horse of the Year Show.

It is with sadness that we announce the passing of Anita Walton (née Hamblin), former Head of Geography here at North London Collegiate School.Anita joined NLCS as Head of Geography in 1966, leaving in 1981 upon her retirement. As a distinguished Geographer, she brought high standards of scholarship and her clear style of teaching enabled students to understand the intricacies of the subject. Anita was so generous with her time and was always available should a student need any additional guidance. Anita’s sister Eleanor informed us that after her retirement, Anita enjoyed keeping in touch with the NLCS community by attending Founder’s Day for as long as she was able to do so.