Nancy Spain

Nancy Spain was a prominent novelist, broadcaster and journalist. She was a columnist for the Daily Express and She magazine in the 1950s and 1960s. She also appeared on many radio broadcasts, particularly on Woman’s Hour, and later as a panellist on the television programmes What’s My Line? and Juke Box Jury. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1917, she was the great-niece of the legendary Mrs Beeton. During the second world war she worked as a driver and served in the WRNS and after the war she published several detective novels set at a girls’ school. Always controversial, her column-writing caused the Daily Express to be sued – twice – by Evelyn Waugh.