Evelyn Irons

Evelyn Graham Irons (17 June 1900 – 3 April 2000)

Early life Irons was born in Govan, Glasgow to Joseph Jones Irons, a stockbroker, and Edith Mary Latta or Irons. She graduated from Somerville College, Oxford. At the Evening Standard she edited the "women's interest" pages, but when World War II broke out she informed the news editor "From now on I'm working for you." Though General Montgomery objected to women reporters on the battlefield, she gained the support of French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny and became one of the first journalists to reach liberated Paris.

Irons travelled to the United States in 1952 to cover the presidential election and stayed on afterward, settling near Brewster, New York.

Personal life Irons's relationship with the writer Vita Sackville-West was well-known – months before her death, an Evening Standard headline identified her as the "war correspondent who broke Vita's heart" – but the romance was brief. As if this were not complex enough, Rinder also became a lover of Sackville-West, forming a menage-a-trois during 1932 that ended when Irons met a fellow journalist, Joy McSweeney. Irons left Vita Sackville-West to stay with McSweeney; According to Sue Fox, Irons' biographer, "It was love at first sight. [...] Right from the start, they were meant to be together. It was a relaxed, natural relationship."

McSweeney died in 1988, although one source reports 1978. Irons and Sackville-West remained lifelong friends who "corresponded warmly". She received the medal from the Prince George, Duke of York at his residence, 145 Piccadilly, in June 1936.

Irons and McSweeney lived together until McSweeney's death in 1978. Irons died in Brewster, New York, on 3 April 2000, at the age of 99, two months short of her 100th birthday.