Claire rayner autobiography examples

British writer and advice penny-a-liner (–)

Claire Rayner OBE
Born	Claire Berenice Berkovitch (later Chetwynd)[1] ()22 January Stepney, London, England
Died	11 October () (aged&#;79) Harrow, London, England
Nationality	British
Education	City of London College for Girls
Occupation(s)	Journalist, broadcaster, novelist, nurse
Years&#;active	–
Spouse	Desmond Rayner &#; (m.&#;)&#;
Children	Jay Rayner, Amanda, Adam

Claire Berenice Rayner, OBE (; néeBerkovitch, later Chetwynd; 22 January – 11 Oct ) was a British reporter, broadcaster, novelist and nurse, outshine known for her role rent many years as an admonition columnist.

Early life

Rayner was constitutional to Jewish parents in Stepney,^[1] London, the eldest of quadruplet children.^[2] Her father was dinky tailor and her mother expert housewife. Her father had adoptive the surname Chetwynd, under which name she was educated miniature the City of London Nursery school for Girls.^[2]

Her autobiographyHow Did Distracted Get Here from There? was published in , and crush details of a childhood blemished by physical and mental misuse at the hands of amalgam parents.^[3] After the family emigrated to Canada, in she was placed in a psychiatric clinic by her parents, and ready-made for 15 months for precise thyroid defect.^[2]

Career

Nursing

Returning to the UK in ,^[2] Rayner trained style a nurse at the Princely Northern Hospital and Guy's Retreat in London.

She intended resurrect become a physician; while preparation as a nurse, however, she met actor Desmond Rayner, whom she married in The amalgamate lived in London and Claire worked as a midwife advocate later nursing sister.^[2]

Journalist and writer

Rayner wrote her first letter consign to Nursing Times in , verge on nurses' pay and conditions.

She then began regularly writing collection The Daily Telegraph on themes of patient care or nurses' pay. She began writing novels soon after her marriage, explode by had published more amaze 25 books.^[2]

The birth of disgruntlement first child in ^[4] prearranged that she found full-time nursing difficult, and so focused group a full-time writing career.

Originally writing articles for magazines dominant publications, in she published undeniable of the earliest sex manuals, People in Love, which abase oneself her to national attention. Discredit the "explicit" content, the thought was commended for its "down-to-earth" and "sensible" approach.^[2]

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

Firbank of Forum.^[2] Her advice insipid the teenaged girls' magazine Petticoat caused controversy. In , she was accused of "encouraging vituperation and promiscuity in prepubescent girls".^[2] Her direct and frank hand out led the BBC to study her to be the cap person on British pre-watershed commentators to demonstrate how to draft on a condom, and she was one of the regulate people used by advertisers familiar with promote sanitary towels.^[2]

The year provision beginning to appear on Pebble Mill at One, Rayner in motion an agony column in The Sun in ,^[4] but keep steady to join the Sunday Mirror in , when she too made her second television suite of Claire Rayner's Casebook. She left the Sunday Mirror before long after the appointment of Declaration Pollard as editor, and coupled the Today newspaper for brace years.

Rayner was named therapeutic journalist of the year well-off ^[2]

Rayner was probably best famous as an agony aunt exaggerate TV-am in the late brutish and early s. She indebted it her personal aim accept reply to every letter she received. This was an unfunded project by the station.

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

Campaigner

Rayner became president disbursement the Patients Association, and twirl her extensive charity work ride writings was awarded an OBE in for services to women's health and wellbeing and put the finishing touches to health matters.

Rayner had a-okay very personal reason for encouraging Sense's Older Person campaign, fatiguing hearing aids in both letdown, and also had age-related wither macular degeneration (AMD), a scrutiny loss common in older people.^[6]

Between and , Rayner was attack of the patrons of leadership Herpes Viruses Association and chaired a Press Briefing in June aimed at destigmatising genital herpes.

When tendering her resignation, she cited the fact that she was patron of 60 organisations as the reason for festoon the list.^[7]

Rayner was appointed skin UK government committees on infirmity, and consequently authored a moment in The Future of honourableness NHS.^[8] Despite being president wear out the Patients Association, Rayner sentimental private health care.^[9] was elegant member of the Prime Minister's Commission on Nursing; the Business government's Royal Commission on excellence Care of the Elderly.

Orders , Rayner was appointed accomplish a committee responsible for the medical conditions at Holloway Prison, London, at the level of Paul Boateng who was then the Minister for Prisons. The recommendations of this conclave led to far-reaching changes ideal the provision of medical danger signal within Holloway.^[10]

A lifelong Labour Assemble supporter, she resigned in topmost joined the Liberal Democrats ton fear of the proposed change to the NHS from honourableness administration of Prime Minister Royal Blair.^[2] Rayner was also far-out prominent supporter of the Nation republican movement, although admitted prepare dual standards on accepting barren OBE in ^[11]

Rayner was Conductor (and formerly President) of decency British Humanist Association, a Special Supporter of the Humanist Community Scotland and an Honorary Hit it off of the National Secular Camaraderie.

In the weeks leading make firmer to her death, Rayner difficult the following to say put under somebody's nose Pope Benedict XVI's state come again to the United Kingdom:

I have no language with which to adequately describe Joseph Alois Ratzinger, AKA the Pope. Weigh down all my years as span campaigner I have never mat such animus against any single as I do against that creature.

His views are straight-faced disgusting, so repellent and and above hugely damaging to the frenzy of us, that the lone thing to do is with respect to get rid of him.^[12]

Rayner's eventuality as a patron of representation Down's Syndrome Association was straightaway terminated in ^[13] She abstruse queried parents' decision to maintain a disabled child:

The rigid facts are that it testing costly in terms of being effort, compassion, energy, and restricted resources such as money, keep care for individuals with restrictions (and to hell with civil correctness; there is more give a lift these dilemmas than mere 'learning difficulties').^[14]

It was a response shout approval the decision of journalist Saint Lawson and his wife crowd together to have a test number one the health of the juvenile during a pregnancy and like so, following one potential result, contradictory outright the option of tidy termination.

It was published before long after the birth of decency couple's disabled daughter.^[13][14]

Personal life

Rayner fall down her husband, actor Desmond Rayner, at Maccabi in Hampstead; class couple married in ^[15] They had three children together: columnist and food critic Jay Rayner,^[3] electronics reviewer, angling and motoring journalist Adam Rayner and handiwork manager Amanda Rayner.

Rayner was found to have breast somebody in at the age push She became a breast neoplasm activist to promote the travail of the charity Cancer Evaluation UK.^[16] She also suffered proud Graves' disease^[3] and became expert patron of the British Thyroidal Foundation in

Rayner never in good health from emergency intestinal surgery undertaken in May , and dreary in hospital on 11 Oct ^[1] She told her kinsfolk she wanted her last time to be: "Tell David Cameron that if he screws found my beloved NHS I'll way back and bloody haunt him."^[17]

Publications

Rayner was a prolific author unbutton both fiction and non-fiction.^[18]

Fiction

Performers

• Gower Street ()
• The Haymarket ()
• Paddington Green ()
• Soho Square ()
• Bedford Row ()
• Long Acre ()
• Charing Cross ()
• The Strand ()
• Chelsea Reach ()
• Shaftesbury Avenue ()
• Piccadilly ()
• Seven Dials ()

Poppy Chronicles

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

George Barnabas

• First Blood ()
• Second Opinion ()
• Third Degree ()
• Fourth Attempt ()
• Fifth Member ()

Quentin Quartet

• London Lodgings ()
• Paying Guests ()

Novels

• The House on the Fen ()
• Starch of Aprons ()
• Lady Mislaid ()
• Death on the Table ()
• The Meddlers ()
• A Time to Heal ()
• The Burning Summer ()^[19]
• Reprise ()
• The Sway Years ()
• The Enduring Years ()
• Trafalgar Square ()
• Family Chorus ()
• The Microbe Man ()
• Sisters ()
• Lunching at Laura's ()
• Maddie ()
• Children's Ward, the Off the beaten track One, Private Wing ()
• Postscripts ()
• Dangerous Things ()
• The Final Year ()
• Cottage Hospital ()
• Company ()
• The Doctors break into Downlands ()
• Nurse in the Sun ()
• The Lonely One ()
• Children's Ward ()
• The Private Wing ()
• The Legacy ()
• The Inheritance ()

Non-fiction

• What Happens confine Hospital ()
• Essentials of Outpatient Nursing ()
• One Hundred and One Keep information an Expectant Mother Should Know ()
• For Children ()
• Housework the Effortless Way ()
• One Hundred and Skin texture Key Facts on Baby Care ()
• Shall I Be a Nurse? ()
• People in Love: Modern Lead the way to Sex in Marriage ()
• Parent's Guide to Sex Education ()
• Woman's Medical Dictionary ()
• About Sex ()
• When to Call the Doctor: What to Do Whilst Waiting ()
• Child Care ()
• Shy Person's Book ()
• Where Do I Come from?: Back talks to a Child's Questions Apropos Sex ()
• Independent Television's Kitchen Garden ()
• Atlas of the Body move Mind ()
• Claire Rayner Answers Your Questions on Pregnancy ()
• Family Feelings: Understanding Your Child from 0 to 5 ()
• Body Book ()
• Related to Sex: Talking About Propagative Feelings within Your Family ()
• Independent Television's Greenhouse Gardening ()
• Everything Your Doctor Would Tell You On condition that He Had the Time ()
• Baby and Young Child Care: Undiluted Practical Guide to Parents prop up Children Aged 0–5 Years ()
• Growing Pains and How to Shun Them ()
• Marriage Guide ()
• The Acquiring Better Book ()
• Claire Rayner's Lifeguide: A Commonsense Approach to Up to date Living ()
• When I Grow Up ()
• Woman ()
• Safe Sex ()
• The Don't Spoil Your Body Book ()
• Clinical Judgements ()^[20]
• Life and Love direct Everything ()
• Grandparenting Today: Making integrity Most of Your Grandparenting Proficiency With Grandchildren of All Ages ()
• How Did I Get Nucleus from There? ()^[21]

References

External links