Anne Scott-James (1913-2009)

Anne Scott-James, who died on Wednesday, 13 May 2009, aged 96, was a writer and editor of remarkable talent, although I mention her here for her connections with two comic and cartoon creators.

In 1941 she left Vogue magazine to became the women's editor of Picture Post where she met the paper's chief war correspondent Macdonald Hastings, later to become the Eagle's Special Investigator between 1950 and 1957. Although temperamentally and politically unsuited, the marriage (Scott-James' second) lasted 18 years.

She became a novelist, and Fleet Street writer and columnist, writing for the Sunday Express and Daily Mail, later turning freelance as a writer and broadcaster following her marriage to cartoonist Osbert Lancaster in 1967. She subsequently became best known for her gardening articles in Queen magazine and a series of best-selling books on gardening, some illustrated by her husband, who died in 1986.

Obituaries: The Times (15 May), Daily Telegraph (15 May), The Guardian (15 May), The Independent (18 May).