Nancy Spain

Nancy Brooker Spain (13 September 1917 – 21 March 1964) was a prominent English broadcaster and journalist. She was a columnist for the Daily Express, She magazine, and the News of the World in the 1950s and 1960s. She also appeared on many radio broadcasts, particularly on Woman's Hour and My Word!, and later as a panelist on the television programmes What's My Line? and Juke Box Jury. Spain died in a plane crash near Aintree racecourse while travelling to the 1964 Grand National.

Early life Spain was born in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, the younger of the two daughters of Lieutenant-Colonel George Redesdale Brooker Spain, a freeman of the city and prominent figure in local military and antiquarian affairs. Her father was a writer himself and appeared in a number of radio plays as well as broadcasting commentaries on Newcastle United games. Her mother, Norah Smiles, was the daughter of Lucy Dorling (a half-sister of Isabella Beeton) and William Holmes Smiles (son of Samuel Smiles). She played lacrosse for Northumberland and Durham, and hockey for the North of England, as well as playing tennis and cricket. She also acted on BBC radio, where she took over star parts vacated by Esther McCracken. She was a sports reporter for the Newcastle Journal. During the Second World War, she served in the WRNS as a driver and was then commissioned and worked in the WRNS press office in London.

Post-war career After the war, Spain published a volume of memoirs about her naval service, called Thank You, Nelson. It received an enthusiastic review from A. A. Milne in The Sunday Times and unexpectedly became a best-seller.

The success of the novels helped Spain become a star columnist for the Daily Express, She Rose Collis wrote a biography of Spain in 1997.

Personal life In the late 1930s, Spain's love of sport led to her first love affair, with a tennis buff, the twenty-three-year-old Winifred "Bin" Sargeant, described by a biographer as "a golden-haired, blue-eyed, middle-class girl from West Hartlepool who drove a green sports car, had a fondness for gin and tonic, and whose proficiency at tennis was such that she had tried, more than once, to qualify for Wimbledon". Later, when often in the news and tempted to marry to seem respectable – Spain's name was linked with that of her close but platonic friend, broadcaster Gilbert Harding – she lived openly with the editor of She, Joan Werner Laurie ("Jonnie"), and was a friend of the famous, including Noël Coward and Marlene Dietrich.

Spain died, with Laurie and three others, on 21 March 1964. They were flying in a Piper Apache aeroplane which crashed near Aintree racecourse, near Liverpool, killing all on board. Spain was travelling there to cover the 1964 Grand National, which was taking place that day.

She is the inspiration of the song "Nancy Spain" written by Barney Rushe and performed by, among others, Christy Moore.