My friend and former colleague Maureen O’Connor, who has died aged 84, was a journalist, author and the founding editor of Education Guardian.
The Guardian management was not sure the supplement would take off when it was created in 1972, so Maureen’s first contract was for six months. But it worked and Education Guardian became loved by a generation of teachers, parents and educationists.
In the 1990s, Maureen switched to writing crime fiction, publishing 25 novels under the pen name Patricia Hall.
Born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, she was the eldest daughter of Roscoe Jones, a headteacher, and Edith (nee Garlick). She went to Bradford grammar school for girls, after which she applied to Oxford University. At the interview, she was told she would have been offered a place but for the lack of places for women at that time. Instead, she studied English at Birmingham University, where she edited the student newspaper and met John O’Connor, then a biochemistry student, whom she married in 1963, a year after graduation.
Having worked at the Yorkshire Post during her holidays, she was accepted on to the one-year graduate traineeship at the Manchester Guardian. This was followed by a year at the London Evening Standard.
After a brief time in Torquay, Devon, for John’s work, the couple settled in Wimbledon, south-west London, for him to take up a lectureship at Surrey University, in Guildford, and Maureen worked on the BBC regional radio news programme for the south-east.
In 1972 she was offered the Education Guardian job on a freelance basis, and undertook it with flair for seven years. In 1979, John Fairhall took on the role, and I joined as education correspondent, becoming firm friends with Maureen, now the main feature writer on the supplement.
A scrupulous and socially conscious journalist, Maureen loved nothing better than holding a flame to the feet of government in the articles she wrote. She impressed me with her calmness and ability to deliver good copy on time, week after week, even when there were troubles with the post. During this time she also wrote A Parents’ Guide to Education (1986) and her first crime novel, The Poison Pool (1991), received positive reviews.
The family, now with two sons, Michael and James, had moved to Oxford in 1976, for John to take up a position at Oxford Polytechnic (later Oxford Brookes University). Maureen became chair of governors at her sons’ high school and was a committed Labour party activist. She remained a loyal Guardian reader to the end, describing it as one of the highlights of her day. She still wanted to get out on to the local political campaign trail into her 80s. As she told me: “It’s the political fury that keeps me going.”
John died in 2014. Maureen is survived by her two sons, and two granddaughters, Ameya and Arya.
