Melanie McFadyean

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Melanie McFadyean
Born(1950-11-24)24 November 1950
London, England
Died16 March 2023(2023-03-16) (aged 72)
London, England
NationalityBritish
Education
Alma mater
Occupation(s)Journalist and lecturer
Spouse
Malcolm Blair
​
(m. 2007)​
Children1
Parents
  • Colin McFadyean (father)
  • Marion Guttman (mother)
Awards
  • Amnesty International UK Media Award
    (2001)
  • Bar Council Legal Reporting Award (2014)

Melanie McFadyean (24 November 1950 – 16 March 2023) was a British journalist and lecturer. She wrote for a wide range of papers, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times and The Independent, particularly about asylum, immigration and human rights issues.[1][2][3]

Early life

Melanie McFadyean was born in

Hitler's successor) in Flensburg.[4][5]

McFadyean's mother, Marion, was a German-Jewish refugee and artist from the prominent

spoonerisms.[9][10][11] McFadyean wrote about the struggles faced by her father in later life to cope with her stepmother's debilitating dementia and the disease in general.[12][13]

McFadyean was educated at two all-girls

boarding schools, at Sherborne School for Girls in North Dorset initially, before being expelled after a year, about which she recalled: "It was such a degenerate and lawless place that I had to go in search of the rules in order to break them. It took me two and a half years to get expelled."[14] She then joined her elder sister at the former Cranborne Chase School, near Tisbury, Wiltshire, and later graduated from the University of Leeds with a first-class BA degree in English in 1974, followed by an MA.[2]

Career

After McFadyean left university in 1974, she returned to London and taught art at a school in Hackney. She switched to teaching English at a further education college in the borough in 1976, then went to Belfast in 1979, to understand and write about women's lives in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.[2] From the late 1970s, she contributed news articles to Womens Voice, an organisation fighting for women's liberation and socialism.[15][16][17]

Working with her close friend Bert MacIver, McFadyean was involved in the launch of his monthly teen music magazine Kicks (1981-82).

agony aunt of the bestselling British teen-girl magazine Just Seventeen,[21] aka J-17, from its inception in 1983[22] until 1986. Her "Dear Melanie" column brought comfort and practical advice to otherwise uninformed teenage girls (and sometimes boys).[20][23][24][25] She supplied the introduction to the 1987 British AIDS education leaflet Love Carefully: Use a Condom, with a cartoon strip, and statements from celebrities,[26] which was given a second edition in 1990.[27]

After 1986, McFadyean worked as a journalist at

Company, London Review of Books, Granta, openDemocracy,[32] Bureau of Investigative Journalism,[33] Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle,[3] and The Oldie (for the latter writing a column called "Pearls of Wisdom").[34]

The focus of much of McFadyean's journalism was on refugees and asylum seekers,[35] and she spoke of being initially inspired by her own family story: "My mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany. She escaped but she had an aunt and an uncle who didn't, so I grew up with it, knowledge of refugees. But the thing that got me in to it was someone rang me up and asked if I had heard this story about children disappearing… I have worked as a teacher, as an agony aunt and always had an affiliation with children and the idea that they were going missing…"[6]

McFadyean made two appearances on the British television review programme

Ben Needham, broadcast by Channel 4 on 10 March 1997.[38] She co-wrote, with Nick Davies, The Boy Business (Season 1, Episode 98) of the Network First documentary about British paedophiles who prey on homeless and vulnerable children, broadcast by ITV on 26 March 1997.[39] She was consultant producer on the documentary film Guilty by Association, produced by Fran Robertson and broadcast by BBC One on 7 July 2014.[40]

McFadyean's BBC Radio 4 work included Thirty Years and More, a five-part series on couples who had been together for three decades and more, produced by Bob Dickinson and first broadcast from 20 to 24 June 2005.[41][42] Five months prior to the broadcast, she had written an article about long-term relationships in The Guardian: "When people who have been together a long time talk about what has kept them so, there is usually something there you'd call love."[43] She also made Who Was Opal?, a documentary radio programme about the controversial American nature writer and diarist Opal Whiteley, whose childhood diary became an international bestseller in the 1920s, also produced by Bob Dickinson and broadcast on 5 January 2010.[44][45][46]

From 2001 to 2015, McFadyean was a part-time lecturer in journalism at

City University, London. She ran the Investigative MA and later taught on the Magazine MA.[1][47] Moved by the plight of asylum seekers and refugees, which she wrote especially about in 2006 for The Guardian[48][49] and elsewhere,[50] she went on to study for a Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies MA, which offered a multidisciplinary, comparative study of national, ethnic and religious conflicts in deeply divided societies, at King's College London.[1] In 2010, she also wrote about the International State Crime Initiative shining the spotlight on state-perpetrated crime in the Times Higher Education magazine.[31][3]

From 2011 to 2023, McFadyean was a trustee of the Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile, a charity that offers a clinical and support service to young asylum seekers and refugees: children, adolescents and young adults and sometimes to parents and families. In 2011, she wrote about the charity's clients in The Guardian: "You would never guess that these youngsters have been trafficked, caught up in wars, forced to be child soldiers, seen their parents murdered, been betrayed by them or never even known them."[51][52][53][54]

Awards

In 2001, McFadyean won an

Amnesty International UK Media Award for her piece "Human traffic" published the same year in The Guardian about unaccompanied asylum-seeking children,[55] and in 2007, she was shortlisted by Amnesty International for her 2006 article "£ ... per incident: suicides in immigration detention" in the London Review of Books.[56][50] She also served on the panel of judges for the Amnesty International Media Awards.[57]

In 2014, McFadyean's work as part of an eight-month investigation into the use of the controversial legal doctrine of "

joint enterprise" in murder trials[33] resulted in a report for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that won the Bar Council Legal Reporting Award. The investigation revealed that at least 1,800 people had been prosecuted for homicide using the little-known and unclear law of joint enterprise.[58][59][60]

Publications

McFadyean co-wrote, with Eileen Fairweather and Roisin McDonough, Only The Rivers Run Free: Northern Ireland: The Women's War (1984), described by The Women's Review of Books as "passionate, compelling and absolutely necessary".

Conservative
quotes with the authors' comments entitled Thatcher's Reign: A Bad Case of the Blues (1984).

In 1987, McFadyean published a collection of short stories entitled Hotel Romantika & Other Stories for the Virago Press Upstarts imprint for teenagers,[62] In 1997, she published Drugs Wise: A Practical Guide for Concerned Parents About the Use of Recreational Drugs, which aims to encourage drug users and their parents to speak about their experiences as well as offering practical professional advice.

McFadyean co-authored and researched, with David Rowland, on the

Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust in relation to consultation procedures in local PFI projects, published as three reports for the Menard Press in 2002: PFI vs Democracy? The Case of Birmingham's Hospitals, PFI vs Democracy? School Governors and the Haringey Schools PFI Scheme,[63] and Selling off the Twilight Years: The Transfer of Birmingham's Homes for Older People.[3]

Personal life

In 1990, McFadyean had a son with her partner Malcolm Blair, a builder whom she married in 2007 after a long relationship.

BRIT Award in 2004.[71]

Illness and death

In 2005, McFadyean was first diagnosed with breast cancer, and wrote a witty and incisive cancer journal of her ordeal in The Guardian: "I have dark hair and had I not had cancer and gone bald, I would never have known how much fun it is being blond. I bought a cheap but stylish platinum wig from World Of Wigs. My son said I looked like Pauline Fowler in EastEnders. I sometimes cover my driving mistakes with rude hand gestures, but as a platinum blonde I had no need."[72][73]

In 2006, McFadyean gave the reasons for writing the cancer journal the previous year and wished that people with other cancers would write about them more. She explained in The Guardian: "I took swiftly to print when I got it and wrote a piece for The Guardian. This was part exorcism, part because as frightening as it is to be healthy one day and have the threat of death hanging over you the next, the cancer journey isn't dull."[74]

In 2012, McFadyean followed up her original cancer diary with a second article about cancer underfunding in The Guardian: "Two things come to mind. The first is that, if a disease is on the increase, so should programmes to treat it be on the increase. The solution is a thought I return to time and again."[75]

In 2019, McFadyean had

NHS is sold off US style, our medical world will lose the heart that contributes to keeping so many of us alive." By contrast, she had been treated with patience, respect and empathy (even when she had been difficult) by the NHS: "My treatment has been delivered by people whose medical expertise is underpinned by something that feels, dare I say it, like a kind of love."[76][77]

Melanie McFadyean died in London, England, from cancer on 16 March 2023, at the age of 72.[2]

Bibliography

Books

Selected articles

  • "The lost boy", The Independent, 21 January 1996.[78]
  • "More fumble than fun", The Independent, 15 September 1996.[79]
  • "Land of the strange", The Guardian, 15 August 1999.[80]
  • "Accidental tourists", The Guardian, 14 May 2000.[81]
  • "Human traffic", The Guardian, 9 March 2001.[55]
  • "Kitchen sink drama", The Guardian, 2 April 2002.[82]
  • With David Rowland: "A costly free lunch", The Guardian, 30 July 2002.[63]
  • "Hard labour", The Guardian, 14 September 2002.[83]
  • "A cold shoulder for Saddam's victims", The Guardian, 22 March 2003.[84]
  • "Where am I?", The Guardian, 18 July 2003.[85]
  • "Some kind of asylum", The Guardian, 6 September 2003.[86]
  • "Chilling echoes", The Guardian, 11 October 2003.[87]
  • "Congratulations – now get out", The Guardian, 12 November 2003.[88]
  • "I didn't teach her that!", The Guardian, 21 January 2004.[89]
  • "A pile-up of shameful contradictions", The Guardian, 24 November 2004.[90]
  • "The legacy of the hunger strikes", The Guardian, 4 March 2006.[91]
  • "Five Houses", Granta, 2 October 2006.[14]
  • "A lapse of humanity", The Guardian, 16 November 2006.[48]
  • "£ ... per incident: suicides in immigration detention", London Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 22, 16 November 2006.[50]
  • "Centres of barbarism", The Guardian, 2 December 2006.[49]
  • "The UK's child slaves", Mail & Guardian, 25 June 2007.[92]
  • "Britain's inhumane shame", The Guardian, 12 July 2007.[93]
  • "Relative Values: Kerry Grist and her daughter, Leighanna Needham", The Sunday Times, 23 March 2008.[94]
  • "The scandal that is Yarl's Wood", The Independent, 1 March 2010.[95]
  • "Our asylum system's fatal failures", The Guardian (Comment is free), 10 March 2010.[96]
  • "Research intelligence: Big Brother backlash", Times Higher Education, 10 June 2010.[31]
  • "The hunt for Ben Needham and the family that won't give up searching", The Guardian, 28 April 2013.[97]
  • "Opinion: 'As I got into the small print of joint enterprise it seemed I had wandered through the looking glass'", Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 31 March 2014.[98]
  • With Maeve McClenaghan and Rachel Stevenson: "Serious concerns emerge over joint enterprise laws", openDemocracy, 1 April 2014.[99]
  • "In the Wrong Crowd", London Review of Books, Vol. 36, No. 18, 25 September 2014.[100]
  • "Compassion in Care", The Oldie, 13 November 2019.[101]
  • "Pearls of Wisdom from Dudley Sutton", The Oldie, 11 February 2020.[102]
  • With Fran Robertson: "Still guilty by association?",
    Proof magazine, No. 5, October 2021.[103]
  • "Not such a misfit - Stephen Frears", The Oldie, 3 November 2022.[104]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Trustees". Baobab Centre. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Fountain, Nigel (23 March 2023). "Melanie McFadyean obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 March 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d "About ISCI". International State Crime Initiative. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  4. ^ "Colin McFadyean". The Times. 12 June 2007.
  5. ^ a b Fry, Helen (1 February 2014). "In Conversation with Melanie McFadyean". Helen Fry. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  6. ^ a b "Interview in an Instant: Melanie McFadyean". Student Action for Refugees (STAR). 23 January 2008. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  7. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (10 February 2007). "The Nazis sent him written demands for atonement of being Jewish". The Guardian.
  8. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (6 July 2002). "A Private War". The Guardian Weekend. p. 49.
  9. ^ "Colin McFadyean". The Times. 12 June 2007.
  10. ^ Purser, Philip (14 October 2010). "Mary Malcolm obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
  11. ^ Clarke, Bridget (17 August 2019). "Mary Malcolm 1918 – 2010 Television Announcer". St John’s Wood Memories. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
  12. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (20 August 2005). "Losing our minds". The Guardian.
  13. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (17 June 2006). "Diary of a desperate daughter". The Guardian.
  14. ^ a b McFadyean, Melanie (2 October 2006). "Five Houses". Granta.
  15. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (December 1978). "News | Miss World" (PDF). Womens Voice. p. 9. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  16. ^ "Airport 79: A free ticket to a dirty job" (PDF). Womens Voice. July 1979. pp. 18–19. Retrieved 14 January 2024. (Photographs by Kim Longinotto; interviews by Melanie McFadyean.)
  17. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (April 1980). "News | International Women's Day Political Status Now!" (PDF). Womens Voice. p. 5. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  18. ^ "Music Magazines". Magforum.com. Retrieved 17 February 2024.
  19. ^ "Kicks Music Magazine". Beatchapter.com. Retrieved 17 February 2024.
  20. ^ a b McFadyean, Melanie (25 March 2004). "Teen spirit". The Guardian.
  21. ^ "Teen Magazines". Magforum.com. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
  22. ^ "Just Seventeen, October 13, 1983". flickr.com. 5 October 2013. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
  23. ^ Varley, Wendy (11 March 2014). "My Mad Fat Diary: Journals as Therapy". Welldoing.org. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
  24. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (March 1986). "Youth in distress: Letters to Just Seventeen". Health Education Journal. 45 (1): 49–51. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  25. ^ Dean, Rosamund (13 January 2023). "The Modern-day Problem Page For Girls… Is An App". Grazia.
  26. Social History of Medicine. 34 (4). Retrieved 6 January 2024 – via ResearchGate
    . (PDF available).
  27. National Library of Medicine
    . Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  28. ^ Young Guardian page edited by Melanie McFadyean. The Guardian, 15 November 1989, p. 46.
  29. Red
    .
  30. ^ @jayrayner1 (23 March 2023). "Very sad news. Melanie did many brilliant things, incl being an agony aunt for Just 17 and later investigating the plight and experiences of refugees and asylum seekers. She also gave me and many others an early break by commissioning pieces for Young Guardian in the early 90s" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  31. ^ a b c McFadyean, Melanie (10 June 2010). "Research intelligence: Big Brother backlash". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  32. ^ "Melanie McFadyean". openDemocracy. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
  33. ^ a b "Melanie McFadyean". Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
  34. ^ Turvill, William (13 June 2014). "Six more Oldie contributors and 'irreplaceable' sub-editor follow Richard Ingrams out of the door". Press Gazette.
  35. ^ Communications team, Philippa (7 December 2010). "Melanie McFadyean: the challenge of changing public and political attitudes to asylum". Refugee Council. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  36. ^ "Did You See...? (Season 9, Episode 12)". IMDb. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  37. ^ "Did You See...? (Season 9, Episode 19)". IMDb. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  38. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (2 March 1997). "Little boy lost". The Observer. London. p. 3. Retrieved 17 October 2016 – via InfoTrac.
  39. ^ "The Boy Business". IMDb. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  40. ^ "Guilty by Association". Two Step Films. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  41. ^ Pidd, Helen (24 June 2005). "Til death do us part". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
  42. ^ "Sociology". The Global British Comedy Collaborative. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
  43. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (15 January 2005). "All I want is you". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
  44. ^ "About". Two Step Films. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  45. ^ "Who Was Opal?". BBC Radio 4. 2010. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  46. ^ "Whiteley, Opal". The Global British Comedy Collaborative. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
  47. ^ "Remembering Melanie McFadyean". XCity Magazine 2023. p. 10. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  48. ^ a b McFadyean, Melanie (16 November 2006). "A lapse of humanity". The Guardian.
  49. ^ a b McFadyean, Melanie (2 December 2006). "Centres of barbarism". The Guardian.
  50. ^ a b c McFadyean, Melanie (16 November 2006). "£ ... per incident". London Review of Books. 28 (22).
  51. ^ "Baobab Centre: People". Companies House. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  52. ^ "Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile". Baobab Centre. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  53. ^ "Baobab Centre: Charity overview". Charity Commission. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  54. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (13 August 2011). "A safe place to call their own". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  55. ^ a b McFadyean, Melanie (9 March 2001). "Human traffic". The Guardian.
  56. ^ "UK: Media Awards 2007 shortlists announced" (Press release). Amnesty International UK. 4 June 2007.
  57. ^ "Amnesty International Media Awards 2005 shortlists announced". Amnesty International. 22 August 2005. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  58. ^ McClenaghan, Maeve; Melanie McFadyean; Rachel Stevenson (31 March 2014). "Revealed: thousands prosecuted under controversial law". The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  59. ^ "Bar Council announces legal reporting awards" (Press release). Media Centre, The Bar Council, 10 November 2014. Archived 16 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine.
  60. ^ McClenaghan, Maeve; Melanie McFadyean; Rachel Stevenson (10 November 2014). "Award-winning journalism: Bureau reporters win Legal Reporting Award". Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
  61. JSTOR 4020310
    .
  62. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (23 October 1987). "Kent Literature Festival 1987 Brochure" (PDF). Creative Folkestone. p. 7. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
  63. ^ a b McFadyean, Melanie; David Rowland (30 July 2002). "A costly free lunch". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  64. ^ Blair, Malcolm (19 July 2012). "New Zealand : Malcolm". Hackney All Nations. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
  65. ^ Blair, Rory (31 December 2023). "Rory Blair Photography". Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  66. ^ "Lemon Jelly - Return To Patagonia". YouTube. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  67. ^ "Lemon Jelly – Lost Horizons". Discogs. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  68. ^ Hermann, Andy (13 August 2011). "Lemon Jelly: Lost Horizons". PopMatters. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  69. ^ Wyse, Pascal (25 October 2002). "Lemon Jelly: Lost Horizons". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  70. ^ "British album certifications – Lemon Jelly - Lost Horizons". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  71. ^ Boyd, Milo (19 November 2013). "Interview: Lemon Jelly". York Vision. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  72. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (22 January 2005). "Who knew?". The Guardian.
  73. ^ Elliott, Jane (8 February 2005). "The impact of cancer diaries". BBC News.
  74. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (22 December 2006). "Women like Jenni". The Guardian.
  75. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (17 October 2012). "If breast cancer is on the rise, we must find a way to pay for it". The Guardian.
  76. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (29 September 2019). "Breast cancer and global big pharma". The Guardian.
  77. ^ Boyer, Anne (26 September 2019). "'My body feels like it is dying from the drugs that are meant to save me': life as a cancer patient". The Guardian.
  78. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (21 January 1996). "The lost boy". The Independent. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022.
  79. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (15 September 1996). "More fumble than fun". The Independent. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022.
  80. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (15 August 1999). "Land of the strange". The Guardian.
  81. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (14 May 2000). "Accidental tourists". The Guardian.
  82. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (2 April 2002). "Kitchen sink drama". The Guardian.
  83. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (14 September 2002). "Hard labour". The Guardian.
  84. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (22 March 2003). "A cold shoulder for Saddam's victims". The Guardian.
  85. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (18 July 2003). "Where am I?". The Guardian.
  86. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (6 September 2003). "Some kind of asylum". The Guardian.
  87. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (11 October 2003). "Chilling echoes". The Guardian.
  88. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (12 November 2003). "Congratulations – now get out". The Guardian.
  89. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (21 January 2004). "I didn't teach her that!: Melanie McFadyean on the joys of irresponsible godparenting - six times over". The Guardian.
  90. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (24 November 2004). "A pile-up of shameful contradictions". The Guardian.
  91. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (4 March 2006). "The legacy of the hunger strikes". The Guardian.
  92. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (25 June 2007). "The UK's child slaves". Mail & Guardian.
  93. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (12 July 2007). "Britain's inhumane shame". The Guardian.
  94. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (23 March 2008). "Relative Values: Kerry Grist and her daughter, Leighanna Needham". The Sunday Times.
  95. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (1 March 2010). "The scandal that is Yarl's Wood". The Independent.
  96. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (10 March 2010). "Our asylum system's fatal failures". The Guardian.
  97. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (28 April 2013). "The hunt for Ben Needham and the family that won't give up searching". The Guardian.
  98. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (31 March 2014). "Opinion: 'As I got into the small print of joint enterprise it seemed I had wandered through the looking glass'". Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Retrieved 27 February 2024.
  99. ^ McFadyean, Melanie; Maeve McClenaghan; Rachel Stevenson (1 April 2014). "Serious concerns emerge over joint enterprise laws". openDemocracy. Retrieved 27 February 2024.
  100. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (25 September 2014). "In the Wrong Crowd". London Review of Books. Vol. 36, no. 18.
  101. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (13 November 2019). "Compassion in Care". The Oldie.
  102. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (11 February 2020). "Pearls of Wisdom from Dudley Sutton". The Oldie. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  103. ^ Robertson, Fran; Melanie McFadyean (30 November 2021). "Still guilty by association?". The Justice Gap. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  104. ^ McFadyean, Melanie (3 November 2022). "Not such a misfit - Stephen Frears". The Oldie. Retrieved 14 April 2024.

External links

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