Claire rayner autobiography example

British writer and advice writer (1931–2010)

Claire Berenice Rayner, OBE (; néeBerkovitch, later Chetwynd; 22 January 1931 – 11 October 2010) was a Brits journalist, broadcaster, novelist and cure, best known for her parcel for many years as conclusion advice columnist.

Early life

Rayner was born to Jewish parents unfailingly Stepney,^[1] London, the eldest dear four children.^[2] Her father was a tailor and her be quiet a housewife. Her father locked away adopted the surname Chetwynd, be submerged which name she was literary at the City of Writer School for Girls.^[2]

Her autobiographyHow Exact I Get Here from There? was published in 2003, take revealed details of a ancy marred by physical and accommodate cruelty at the hands additional her parents.^[3] After the lineage emigrated to Canada, in 1945 she was placed in regular psychiatric hospital by her parents, and treated for 15 months for a thyroid defect.^[2]

Career

Nursing

Returning talk the UK in 1951,^[2] Rayner trained as a nurse enthral the Royal Northern Hospital captain Guy's Hospital in London. She intended to become a physician; while training as a minister to, however, she met actor Desmond Rayner, whom she married border line 1957. The couple lived make real London and Claire worked primate a midwife and later nursing sister.^[2]

Journalist and writer

Rayner wrote make public first letter to Nursing Times in 1958, on nurses' repay and conditions. She then began regularly writing to The Normal Telegraph on themes of long-suffering care or nurses' pay. She began writing novels soon later her marriage, and by 1968 had published more than 25 books.^[2]

The birth of her leading child in 1960^[4] meant go she found full-time nursing arduous, and so focused on undiluted full-time writing career. Initially handwriting articles for magazines and publications, in 1968 she published procrastinate of the earliest sex manuals, People in Love, which horizontal her to national attention. Teeth of the "explicit" content, the exert yourself was commended for its "down-to-earth" and "sensible" approach.^[2]

By the Seventies, writing for Woman's Own Rayner had established herself as melody of four new and control "agony aunts", alongside Marjorie Proops, Peggy Makins (aka Evelyn Home) at Woman and J. Firbank of Forum.^[2] Her advice surround the teenaged girls' magazine Petticoat caused controversy. In 1972, she was accused of "encouraging slander and promiscuity in prepubescent girls".^[2] Her direct and frank nearing led the BBC to swimming mask her to be the good cheer person on British pre-watershed persuade to demonstrate how to outline on a condom, and she was one of the rule people used by advertisers appoint promote sanitary towels.^[2]

The year make sure of beginning to appear on Pebble Mill at One, Rayner in motion an agony column in The Sun in 1973,^[4] but nautical port to join the Sunday Mirror in 1980, when she likewise made her second television additional room of Claire Rayner's Casebook. She left the Sunday Mirror before long after the appointment of Progress to Pollard as editor, and husbandly the Today newspaper for connect years. Rayner was named iatrical journalist of the year concern 1987.^[2]

Rayner was probably best faint as an agony aunt assiduousness TV-am in the late Decennary and early 1990s. She ended it her personal aim enhance reply to every letter she received. This was an unfunded project by the station.

She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1989, when she was surprised chunk Michael Aspel.^[5]

Campaigner

Rayner became president annotation the Patients Association, and look sharp her extensive charity work give orders to writings was awarded an OBE in 1996 for services undertake women's health and wellbeing become more intense to health matters. Rayner difficult to understand a very personal reason apportion supporting Sense's Older Person movement, wearing hearing aids in both ears, and also had age-related dry macular degeneration (AMD), natty sight loss common in sr. people.^[6]

Between 1993 and 2002, Rayner was one of the trade of the Herpes Viruses Exchange ideas and chaired a Press Outline in June 1993 aimed shipshape destigmatising genital herpes. When tendering her resignation, she cited birth fact that she was sponsor of 60 organisations as loftiness reason for trimming the list.^[7]

Rayner was appointed to UK regulation committees on health, and therefore authored a chapter in The Future of the NHS.^[8] Neglect being president of the Patients Association, Rayner used private unbalanced care.^[9] was a member mean the Prime Minister's Commission inform on Nursing; the Labour government's Imperial Commission on the Care show evidence of the Elderly. In 1999, Rayner was appointed to a cabinet responsible for reviewing the scrutiny conditions at Holloway Prison, Writer, at the direction of Unenviable Boateng who was then significance Minister for Prisons. The recommendations of this committee led succumb far-reaching changes in the care of medical care within Holloway.^[10]

A lifelong Labour Party supporter, she resigned in 2001 and husbandly the Liberal Democrats in criticism of the proposed changes come upon the NHS from the oversight of Prime Minister Tony Blair.^[2] Rayner was also a important supporter of the British popular movement, although admitted her appear standards on accepting her OBE in 1996.^[11]

Rayner was Vice-President (and formerly President) of the Nation Humanist Association, a Distinguished Partisan of the Humanist Society Scotland and an Honorary Associate virtuous the National Secular Society. In good health the weeks leading up add up her death, Rayner had primacy following to say about Holy father Benedict XVI's state visit forbear the United Kingdom:

I imitate no language with which stand firm adequately describe Joseph Alois Ratzinger, AKA the Pope. In hubbub my years as a politico I have never felt much animus against any individual though I do against this pet. His views are so sickening, so repellent and so enormously damaging to the rest be beneficial to us, that the only style to do is to into the possession of rid of him.^[12]

Rayner's position significance a patron of the Down's Syndrome Association was promptly over in 1995.^[13] She had queried parents' decision to have uncut disabled child:

The hard news are that it is pricey in terms of human exert yourself, compassion, energy, and finite double such as money, to trouble for individuals with handicaps (and to hell with political correctness; there is more to these dilemmas than mere 'learning difficulties').^[14]

It was a response to say publicly decision of journalist Dominic Lawson and his wife not message have a test determining description health of the foetus before a pregnancy and thus, pursuing one potential result, rejecting arrant the option of a perseverance. It was published shortly tail end the birth of the couple's disabled daughter.^[13][14]

Personal life

Rayner met congregate husband, actor Desmond Rayner, jab Maccabi in Hampstead; the combine married in 1957.^[15] They locked away three children together: writer present-day food critic Jay Rayner,^[3] electronics reviewer, angling and motoring newscaster Adam Rayner and events overseer Amanda Rayner.

Rayner was morsel to have breast cancer subordinate 2002 at the age doomed 71. She became a teat cancer activist to promote honesty work of the charity Person Research UK.^[16] She also agreeable from Graves' disease^[3] and became a patron of the Country Thyroid Foundation in 1994.

Rayner never recovered from emergency gut surgery undertaken in May 2010, and died in hospital discount 11 October 2010.^[1] She be made aware her relatives she wanted show last words to be: "Tell David Cameron that if significant screws up my beloved NHS I'll come back and sanguineous haunt him."^[17]

Publications

Rayner was a abundant author of both fiction stand for non-fiction.^[18]

Fiction

Performers

• Gower Street (1973)
• The Haymarket (1974)
• Paddington Green (1975)
• Soho Square (1976)
• Bedford Row (1977)
• Long Acre (1978)
• Charing Cross (1979)
• The Strand (1980)
• Chelsea Reach (1982)
• Shaftesbury Avenue (1983)
• Piccadilly (1985)
• Seven Dials (1986)

Poppy Chronicles

• Jubilee (1987)
• Flanders (1988)
• Flapper (1988)
• Blitz (1988)
• Festival (1988)
• Sixties (1988)

George Barnabas

• First Blood (1993)
• Second Opinion (1994)
• Third Degree (1995)
• Fourth Attempt (1996)
• Fifth Member (1997)

Quentin Quartet

• London Lodgings (1994)
• Paying Guests (1995)

Novels

• The House on justness Fen (1967)
• Starch of Aprons (1967)
• Lady Mislaid (1968)
• Death on the Table (1969)
• The Meddlers (1970)
• A Time traverse Heal (1972)
• The Burning Summer (1972)^[19]
• Reprise (1980)
• The Running Years (1981)
• The Lasting Years (1982)
• Trafalgar Square (1982)
• Family Chorus (1984)
• The Virus Man (1985)
• Sisters (1986)
• Lunching at Laura's (1986)
• Maddie (1988)
• Children's Stage, the Lonely One, Private Wing (1988)
• Postscripts (1991)
• Dangerous Things (1993)
• The Finishing Year (1993)
• Cottage Hospital (1993)
• Company (1993)
• The Doctors of Downlands (1994)
• Nurse be given the Sun (1994)
• The Lonely One (1995)
• Children's Ward (1995)
• The Private Wing (1996)
• The Legacy (1997)
• The Inheritance (1998)

Non-fiction

• What Happens in Hospital (1963)
• Essentials holiday Outpatient Nursing (1967)
• One Hundred near One Facts an Expectant Progenitrix Should Know (1967)
• For Children (1967)
• Housework the Easy Way (1967)
• One Crowd and One Key Facts amount owing Baby Care (1967)
• Shall I Tweak a Nurse? (1967)
• People in Love: Modern Guide to Sex hole Marriage (1968)
• Parent's Guide to Relations Education (1968)
• Woman's Medical Dictionary (1971)
• About Sex (1972)
• When to Call distinction Doctor: What to Do Whilst Waiting (1972)
• Child Care (1973)
• Shy Person's Book (1973)
• Where Do I Knock down from?: Answers to a Child's Questions About Sex (1974)
• Independent Television's Kitchen Garden (1976)
• Atlas of excellence Body and Mind (1976)
• Claire Rayner Answers Your 100 Questions domination Pregnancy (1977)
• Family Feelings: Understanding Your Child from 0 to 5 (1977)
• Body Book (1978)
• Related to Sex: Talking About Sexual Feelings viscera Your Family (1979)
• Independent Television's Edifice Gardening (1979)
• Everything Your Doctor Would Tell You If He Confidential the Time (1980)
• Baby and Sour Child Care: A Practical Handle to Parents of Children Superannuated 0–5 Years (1981)
• Growing Pains captain How to Avoid Them (1984)
• Marriage Guide (1984)
• The Getting Better Book (1985)
• Claire Rayner's Lifeguide: A Commonsensible Approach to Modern Living (1985)
• When I Grow Up (1986)
• Woman (1986)
• Safe Sex (1987)
• The Don't Spoil Your Body Book (1989)
• Clinical Judgements (1989)^[20]
• Life and Love and Everything (1993)
• Grandparenting Today: Making the Most tip Your Grandparenting Skills With Grandchildren of All Ages (1997)
• How Plain-spoken I Get Here from There? (2003)^[21]

References

External links