Nancy Spain

''Nancy Spain'' (1917 - 1964), was a prominent English broadcaster and journalist. She spent much of her youth in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne. Her father was Lieutenant-Colonel Spain, a freeman of the city and a prominent figure in local military and antiquarian affairs. He was a writer himself and appeared in a number of radio plays as well as broadcasting commentaries on Newcastle United games. Nancy was a strong girl and remembers pushing the future eminent journalist William Hardcastle into the Bull Park lake on the Town Moor, where she used to learn to ride at five shillings an hour "with other little bourgeois tots". Nancy went to Roedean School (a family tradition) where she began wearing "mannish" clothes, and developed the speaking voice which stood her in such good stead in her eventual media career. She played lacrosse for Northumberland and Durham, and hockey for the North of England, as well as acting on BBC radio, where she took over the star parts vacated by Esther McCracken. During the war, Nancy served in the WRNS on Tyneside, a period covered in her book 'Thank you, Nelson' (1945). Nancy Spain became a star columnist for the 'Daily Express', 'She' and the 'News of the World' in the 1950s and '60s and made many radio broadcasts, particularly on Woman's Hour and My Word!. She later appeared on Juke Box Jury, though her inconsequential approach was by now unsuited to the times. Often in the news, and tempted to marry to seem 'respectable' - her name was linked with that of Gilbert Harding - she lived openly with the editor of 'She', Joan Werner Laurie (Jonny), and was a friend of the famous, including Noel Coward and Marlene Dietrich. She and Joan were regulars at The Gateways club in Chelsea, London and were respected lesbian icons.<ref name="ftc2ts"></ref> She died, with Joan and four others, in a light aeroplane crash on her way to the Grand National and was cremated with Joan at Golders Green Crematorium, London. She left one son - publicly unacknowledged during her lifetime - Tom Carter. Noel Coward summed up: 'It is cruel that all that gaiety, intelligence and vitality should be snuffed out when so many bores and horrors are left living.' As well as her books of memoirs, including 'Why I'm Not a Millionaire' (1956), Nancy wrote a biography in 1948 of Mrs Beeton (an ancestor), and a series of detective novels. Rose Collis wrote a posthumous biography of the broadcaster and journalist in 1997.