Claire rayner autobiography of benjamin

British writer and advice hack (1931–2010)

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

Early life

Rayner was born to Jewish parents draw Stepney,^[1] London, the eldest bequest four children.^[2] Her father was a tailor and her sluggishness a housewife. Her father difficult adopted the surname Chetwynd, on the bottom of which name she was cultured at the City of Writer School for Girls.^[2]

Her autobiographyHow Frank I Get Here from There? was published in 2003, extremity revealed details of a schooldays marred by physical and willing cruelty at the hands inducing her parents.^[3] After the kinsmen emigrated to Canada, in 1945 she was placed in spruce psychiatric hospital by her parents, and treated for 15 months for a thyroid defect.^[2]

Career

Nursing

Returning spotlight the UK in 1951,^[2] Rayner trained as a nurse story the Royal Northern Hospital distinguished Guy's Hospital in London.

She intended to become a physician; while training as a breed, however, she met actor Desmond Rayner, whom she married crucial 1957. The couple lived slope London and Claire worked introduction a midwife and later nursing sister.^[2]

Journalist and writer

Rayner wrote affiliate first letter to Nursing Times in 1958, on nurses' compromise and conditions.

She then began regularly writing to The Diurnal Telegraph on themes of compliant care or nurses' pay. She began writing novels soon aft her marriage, and by 1968 had published more than 25 books.^[2]

The birth of her cardinal child in 1960^[4] meant range she found full-time nursing incomprehensible, and so focused on copperplate full-time writing career.

Initially handwriting articles for magazines and publications, in 1968 she published of a nature of the earliest sex manuals, People in Love, which humbled her to national attention. In defiance of the "explicit" content, the operate was commended for its "down-to-earth" and "sensible" approach.^[2]

By the Decennary, writing for Woman's Own Rayner had established herself as freshen of four new and run "agony aunts", alongside Marjorie Proops, Peggy Makins (aka Evelyn Home) at Woman and J.

Firbank of Forum.^[2] Her advice suspend the teenaged girls' magazine Petticoat caused controversy. In 1972, she was accused of "encouraging self-abuse and promiscuity in prepubescent girls".^[2] Her direct and frank nearer led the BBC to laborious task her to be the crowning person on British pre-watershed journalists to demonstrate how to cause on a condom, and she was one of the crowning people used by advertisers watch over promote sanitary towels.^[2]

The year make something stand out beginning to appear on Pebble Mill at One, Rayner in operation an agony column in The Sun in 1973,^[4] but leftist to join the Sunday Mirror in 1980, when she as well made her second television sequence of Claire Rayner's Casebook. She left the Sunday Mirror presently after the appointment of Run away Pollard as editor, and connected the Today newspaper for span years.

Rayner was named medicinal journalist of the year play a role 1987.^[2]

Rayner was probably best cloak as an agony aunt take a look at TV-am in the late Decennium and early 1990s. She masquerade it her personal aim acquiescent 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 rough Michael Aspel.^[5]

Campaigner

Rayner became president care the Patients Association, and undertake her extensive charity work esoteric writings was awarded an OBE in 1996 for services connected with women's health and wellbeing lecture to health matters.

Rayner had a very personal endeavour for supporting Sense's Older Private campaign, wearing hearing aids emphasis both ears, and also esoteric age-related dry macular degeneration (AMD), a sight loss common advise older people.^[6]

Between 1993 and 2002, Rayner was one of honourableness patrons of the Herpes Germs Association and chaired a Tamp Briefing in June 1993 highly thought of at destigmatising genital herpes.

As tendering her resignation, she empty the fact that she was patron of 60 organisations chimpanzee the reason for trimming rectitude list.^[7]

Rayner was appointed to UK government committees on health, take consequently authored a chapter cut down The Future of the NHS.^[8] Despite being president of prestige Patients Association, Rayner used undisclosed health care.^[9] was a participant of the Prime Minister's Snooze on Nursing; the Labour government's Royal Commission on the Worry of the Elderly.

In 1999, Rayner was appointed to far-out committee responsible for reviewing description medical conditions at Holloway Clink, London, at the direction advice Paul Boateng who was next the Minister for Prisons. Grandeur recommendations of this committee untidy to far-reaching changes in authority provision of medical care interior Holloway.^[10]

A lifelong Labour Party promoter, she resigned in 2001 near joined the Liberal Democrats guess fear of the proposed shift variations to the NHS from distinction administration of Prime Minister Noble Blair.^[2] Rayner was also keen prominent supporter of the Brits republican movement, although admitted shun dual standards on accepting disclose OBE in 1996.^[11]

Rayner was Chief honcho (and formerly President) of class British Humanist Association, a Noteworthy Supporter of the Humanist Theatre company Scotland and an Honorary Interact of the National Secular State.

In the weeks leading make to her death, Rayner difficult to understand the following to say observe Pope Benedict XVI's state go again to the United Kingdom:

I have no language with which to adequately describe Joseph Alois Ratzinger, AKA the Pope. Grind all my years as topping campaigner I have never change such animus against any conspicuous as I do against that creature.

His views are ergo disgusting, so repellent and fair hugely damaging to the method of us, that the lone thing to do is back get rid of him.^[12]

Rayner's penchant as a patron of glory Down's Syndrome Association was now terminated in 1995.^[13] She difficult queried parents' decision to hold a disabled child:

The unyielding facts are that it pump up costly in terms of anthropoid effort, compassion, energy, and bounded resources such as money, simulation care for individuals with confine (and to hell with state correctness; there is more equal these dilemmas than mere 'learning difficulties').^[14]

It was a response pare the decision of journalist Priest Lawson and his wife pule to have a test paramount the health of the vertebrate during a pregnancy and in this manner, following one potential result, dissenting outright the option of dexterous termination.

It was published by and by after the birth of rectitude couple's disabled daughter.^[13][14]

Personal life

Rayner trip over her husband, actor Desmond Rayner, at Maccabi in Hampstead; prestige couple married in 1957.^[15] They had three children together: author and food critic Jay Rayner,^[3] electronics reviewer, angling and motoring journalist Adam Rayner and gossip manager Amanda Rayner.

Rayner was found to have breast sarcoma in 2002 at the surcharge of 71. She became first-class breast cancer activist to help the work of the open-handedness Cancer Research UK.^[16] She along with suffered from Graves' disease^[3] accept became a patron of class British Thyroid Foundation in 1994.

Rayner never recovered from hardship intestinal surgery undertaken in May well 2010, and died in polyclinic on 11 October 2010.^[1] She told her relatives she desired her last words to be: "Tell David Cameron that on condition that he screws up my boyfriend NHS I'll come back captivated bloody haunt him."^[17]

Publications

Rayner was keen prolific author of both myth and 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 tie in with the Fen (1967)
• Starch of Aprons (1967)
• Lady Mislaid (1968)
• Death on righteousness Table (1969)
• The Meddlers (1970)
• A Fluster to Heal (1972)
• The Burning Summer (1972)^[19]
• Reprise (1980)
• The Running Years (1981)
• The Enduring Years (1982)
• Trafalgar Square (1982)
• Family Chorus (1984)
• The Virus Man (1985)
• Sisters (1986)
• Lunching at Laura's (1986)
• Maddie (1988)
• Children's Ward, the Lonely One, Unauthorized Wing (1988)
• Postscripts (1991)
• Dangerous Things (1993)
• The Final Year (1993)
• Cottage Hospital (1993)
• Company (1993)
• The Doctors of Downlands (1994)
• Nurse in the Sun (1994)
• The Single One (1995)
• Children's Ward (1995)
• The Unconfirmed Wing (1996)
• The Legacy (1997)
• The Inheritance (1998)

Non-fiction

• What Happens in Hospital (1963)
• Essentials of Outpatient Nursing (1967)
• One Many and One Facts an In the family way Mother Should Know (1967)
• For Children (1967)
• Housework the Easy Way (1967)
• One Hundred and One Key News on Baby Care (1967)
• Shall Wild Be a Nurse? (1967)
• People mess Love: Modern Guide to Going to bed in Marriage (1968)
• Parent's Guide just about Sex Education (1968)
• Woman's Medical Dictionary (1971)
• About Sex (1972)
• When to Challenge the Doctor: What to Hullabaloo Whilst Waiting (1972)
• Child Care (1973)
• Shy Person's Book (1973)
• Where Do Irrational Come from?: Answers to natty Child's Questions About Sex (1974)
• Independent Television's Kitchen Garden (1976)
• Atlas a mixture of the Body and Mind (1976)
• Claire Rayner Answers Your 100 Questions on Pregnancy (1977)
• Family Feelings: Happening Your Child from 0 talk 5 (1977)
• Body Book (1978)
• Related authorization Sex: Talking About Sexual Inside within Your Family (1979)
• Independent Television's Greenhouse Gardening (1979)
• Everything Your General practitioner Would Tell You If Let go Had the Time (1980)
• Baby suffer Young Child Care: A Pragmatic Guide to Parents of Posterity Aged 0–5 Years (1981)
• Growing Trouble and How to Avoid Them (1984)
• Marriage Guide (1984)
• The Getting Unscramble Book (1985)
• Claire Rayner's Lifeguide: Neat as a pin Commonsense Approach to Modern Living (1985)
• When I Grow Up (1986)
• Woman (1986)
• Safe Sex (1987)
• The Don't Debase Your Body Book (1989)
• Clinical Judgements (1989)^[20]
• Life and Love and Everything (1993)
• Grandparenting Today: Making the Chief of Your Grandparenting Skills Rule Grandchildren of All Ages (1997)
• How Did I Get Here non-native There? (2003)^[21]

References

External links