ournalist who has died at the age of 55, will be sorely missed by her family and friends.
An investigative journalist par excellence, she had an enviable string of scoops while working on The Independent, The Times Higher Education Supplement and the Times Educational Supplement in the '80s and '90s.
One of four children from a working class background in Crawley, Sussex, she was the first member of her family to go to university. She read politics and modern history at Manchester University and later became president of the students' union.
After joining the Birmingham Post and Mail group as a graduate trainee journalist, she became the Post's municipal correspondent in 1976. Several years later she gravitated to London as a reporter on the THES.
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Fearless, forthright and intensely focused, she had a sixth sense for the false note, the lie, obfuscation or cover-up. She was, without doubt, one of the best investigative educational journalists of her generation.
Personally she was very warm, extremely kind and above all humane and intensely caring. She did not, however, suffer fools gladly and her intense loyalty to friends and colleagues could trip into enmity if she felt betrayed or let down.
A lifelong Manchester United fan, she was in the habit of giving her secret journalistic sources football pseudonyms such as Ryan Giggs or Gary Neville. She was also a keen Beatles fan.
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As Peter Scott, her former editor at The Times Higher Education Supplement, said in his tribute to her: "For her friends, her absence will be almost too hard to bear."
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