Marghanita Laski

Marghanita Laski (24 October 1915 – 6 February 1988) was an English journalist, radio panellist and novelist: she also wrote literary biography, plays and short stories. Marghanita was born in Manchester, England, to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals (Neville Laski was her father, Moses Gaster her grandfather and Harold Laski her uncle), she was educated at Lady Barn House School and St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, worked in fash... more

Marghanita Laski (24 October 1915 – 6 February 1988) was an English journalist, radio panellist and novelist: she also wrote literary biography, plays and short stories. Marghanita was born in Manchester, England, to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals (Neville Laski was her father, Moses Gaster her grandfather and Harold Laski her uncle), she was educated at Lady Barn House School and St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, worked in fashion, then studied English at Somerville College, Oxford She married publisher John Howard (in Paris), and worked in journalism. After her son and daughter were born, she began writing in earnest: Marghanita was an omnivorous reader, from 1958 onwards she became a prolific and compulsive contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary and by 1986 had "carded" around 250,000 quotations. An avowed atheist, she was also a keen supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Her play, The Offshore Island, is about nuclear warfare. She was a... less