Pamela Joan Vandyke-Price

Pamela Joan Vandyke-Price née Pamela Joan Walford) (21 March 1923 – 12 January 2014) was a British Wine taster and writer. She is credited as the first British woman to write about wine and spirits. She was known for her strong opinions.

Life Vandyke-Price was an only child born in Coventry (one source says Leicester ). Her mother, Florence Amélie née Halliday, was French and her father, Harry Norman Walford was a manager in a watch making business. She read English at Somerville College, Oxford, attending lectures held by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. She went on to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. During her time there, she met Alan Vandyke Price a student doctor and her future husband. They married in 1950 and she became a journalist at Home and Garden. Her husband died in 1955 from hepatitis which he had caught as part of his job. She consoled herself by entering a platonic relationship with Allan Sichel, who was the owner of a wine company and would become her mentor on wine-making and -tasting. It was not her first book but this one sold well. In 1980 she published "The Penguin Book of Spirits and Liqueurs" and the following year she was knighted when the French government gave her the Order of Agricultural Merit.

She died on 12 January 2014 in London leaving behind instructions of who not to invite to her funeral.