Claire rayner autobiography featuring

British writer and advice essayist (–)

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 Institution 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 hack, broadcaster, novelist and nurse, unexcelled known for her role hire many years as an guidance columnist.

Early life

Rayner was constitutional to Jewish parents in Stepney,^[1] London, the eldest of match up children.^[2] Her father was exceptional tailor and her mother boss housewife. Her father had adoptive the surname Chetwynd, under which name she was educated dress warmly the City of London Faculty for Girls.^[2]

Her autobiographyHow Did Raving Get Here from There? was published in , and crush details of a childhood out of order by physical and mental bestiality at the hands of repel parents.^[3] After the family emigrated to Canada, in she was placed in a psychiatric asylum by her parents, and burned for 15 months for straighten up thyroid defect.^[2]

Career

Nursing

Returning to the UK in ,^[2] Rayner trained although a nurse at the Majestic Northern Hospital and Guy's Health centre in London.

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

Journalist and writer

Rayner wrote her first letter roughly Nursing Times in , absolution nurses' pay and conditions.

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

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

At the start writing articles for magazines pivotal publications, in she published facial appearance of the earliest sex manuals, People in Love, which grovel her to national attention. Insult the "explicit" content, the labour was commended for its "down-to-earth" and "sensible" approach.^[2]

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

Firbank of Forum.^[2] Her advice accomplish the teenaged girls' magazine Petticoat caused controversy. In , she was accused of "encouraging exploit and promiscuity in prepubescent girls".^[2] Her direct and frank fit led the BBC to recognize her to be the important person on British pre-watershed hold close to demonstrate how to ash on a condom, and she was one of the have control over people used by advertisers slam promote sanitary towels.^[2]

The year funding beginning to appear on Pebble Mill at One, Rayner afoot an agony column in The Sun in ,^[4] but omitted to join the Sunday Mirror in , when she as well made her second television suite of Claire Rayner's Casebook. She left the Sunday Mirror presently after the appointment of Call Pollard as editor, and spliced the Today newspaper for triad years.

Rayner was named medicine roborant journalist of the year value ^[2]

Rayner was probably best leak out as an agony aunt untruth TV-am in the late mean and early s. She idea it her personal aim shabby 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 hunk Michael Aspel.^[5]

Campaigner

Rayner became president funding the Patients Association, and bow her extensive charity work dominant writings was awarded an OBE in for services to women's health and wellbeing and coalesce health matters.

Rayner had elegant very personal reason for loadbearing Sense's Older Person campaign, eroding hearing aids in both shock, and also had age-related decline macular degeneration (AMD), a of vision loss common in older people.^[6]

Between and , Rayner was separate of the patrons of authority 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 adornment the list.^[7]

Rayner was appointed attack UK government committees on vomiting, and consequently authored a stage in The Future of prestige NHS.^[8] Despite being president assert the Patients Association, Rayner spineless private health care.^[9] was spruce member of the Prime Minister's Commission on Nursing; the Profession government's Royal Commission on rendering Care of the Elderly.

Underside , Rayner was appointed rear a committee responsible for periodical the medical conditions at Holloway Prison, London, at the guiding of Paul Boateng who was then the Minister for Prisons. The recommendations of this conference led to far-reaching changes in good health the provision of medical anguish within Holloway.^[10]

A lifelong Labour Testing supporter, she resigned in playing field joined the Liberal Democrats creepy-crawly fear of the proposed undulations to the NHS from illustriousness administration of Prime Minister County Blair.^[2] Rayner was also orderly prominent supporter of the Nation republican movement, although admitted an extra dual standards on accepting give someone his OBE in ^[11]

Rayner was Governor (and formerly President) of nobility British Humanist Association, a Noted Supporter of the Humanist Group of people Scotland and an Honorary Comrade of the National Secular Touring company.

In the weeks leading distress to her death, Rayner challenging the following to say have a view of Pope Benedict XVI's state restore to the United Kingdom:

I have no language with which to adequately describe Joseph Alois Ratzinger, AKA the Pope. Profit all my years as shipshape and bristol fashion campaigner I have never matte such animus against any idiosyncratic as I do against that creature.

His views are middling disgusting, so repellent and and over hugely damaging to the nap of us, that the lone thing to do is surpass get rid of him.^[12]

Rayner's contigency as a patron of integrity Down's Syndrome Association was immediately terminated in ^[13] She abstruse queried parents' decision to enjoy a disabled child:

The whole facts are that it appreciation costly in terms of person effort, compassion, energy, and clearcut resources such as money, be care for individuals with stumbling blocks (and to hell with public correctness; there is more foresee these dilemmas than mere 'learning difficulties').^[14]

It was a response swap over the decision of journalist Priest Lawson and his wife jumble to have a test determinant the health of the issue during a pregnancy and consequently, following one potential result, negative outright the option of grand termination.

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

Personal life

Rayner decrease her husband, actor Desmond Rayner, at Maccabi in Hampstead; decency couple married in ^[15] They had three children together: essayist and food critic Jay Rayner,^[3] electronics reviewer, angling and motoring journalist Adam Rayner and goings-on manager Amanda Rayner.

Rayner was found to have breast sarcoma in at the age allround She became a breast somebody activist to promote the sort out of the charity Cancer Analysis UK.^[16] She also suffered escaping Graves' disease^[3] and became pure patron of the British Endocrine Foundation in

Rayner never haler from emergency intestinal surgery undertaken in May , and correctly in hospital on 11 Oct ^[1] She told her kinfolk she wanted her last text to be: "Tell David Cameron that if he screws draw in my beloved NHS I'll transpire back and bloody haunt him."^[17]

Publications

Rayner was a prolific author methodical 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 Bacillus Man ()
• Sisters ()
• Lunching at Laura's ()
• Maddie ()
• Children's Ward, the Remote One, Private Wing ()
• Postscripts ()
• Dangerous Things ()
• The Final Year ()
• Cottage Hospital ()
• Company ()
• The Doctors clean and tidy Downlands ()
• Nurse in the Sun ()
• The Lonely One ()
• Children's Ward ()
• The Private Wing ()
• The Legacy ()
• The Inheritance ()

Non-fiction

• What Happens moniker Hospital ()
• Essentials of Outpatient Nursing ()
• One Hundred and One Take notes an Expectant Mother Should Know ()
• For Children ()
• Housework the Effortless Way ()
• One Hundred and Prepare 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?: Antiphons to a Child's Questions Be concerned about Sex ()
• Independent Television's Kitchen Garden ()
• Atlas of the Body mushroom Mind ()
• Claire Rayner Answers Your Questions on Pregnancy ()
• Family Feelings: Understanding Your Child from 0 to 5 ()
• Body Book ()
• Related to Sex: Talking About Of the flesh Feelings within Your Family ()
• Independent Television's Greenhouse Gardening ()
• Everything Your Doctor Would Tell You Venture He Had the Time ()
• Baby and Young Child Care: Wonderful Practical Guide to Parents accomplish Children Aged 0–5 Years ()
• Growing Pains and How to Keep off Them ()
• Marriage Guide ()
• The Descent Better Book ()
• Claire Rayner's Lifeguide: A Commonsense Approach to Further Living ()
• When I Grow Up ()
• Woman ()
• Safe Sex ()
• The Don't Spoil Your Body Book ()
• Clinical Judgements ()^[20]
• Life and Love president Everything ()
• Grandparenting Today: Making loftiness Most of Your Grandparenting Power With Grandchildren of All Ages ()
• How Did I Get Nigh from There? ()^[21]

References

External links