Betty Jerman (1922–2010)

Betty Jerman, née Wilson, was born in Harlesden in northwest London. Her father was a printer who was unemployed during the Great Depression. To support them, her mother juggled property deals and moved the family 13 times in Betty's first 14 years. Betty received a patchwork education at schools across London. During World War II, she got a job in the Peterborough office of a wartime emergency supplies depot. She then joined the Foreign Office in the political intelligence department, where she eventually edited a departmental newsletter about enemy movement and propaganda. After the war, in the German section, she provided the Foreign Secretary with a daily digest of media comment. She then left the Foreign Office and joined the Manchester Guardian as a journalist. She was a fashion and interior design writer from 1950 to 1956. In 1954, she married Leslie Jerman, a reporter for the Scotsman, and became a freelance journalist when her first son was born. After that, she produced a steady stream of popular articles about her life as a wife and mother. In 1981, she published a book, The Lively-Minded Women, about the first 20 years of the National Housewives Register. Her three Guardian articles per year on holiday activities became a bestselling paperback called Kids' Britain (1986).