Shirley Conran

Dame Shirley Ida Conran (; 21 September 1932 – 9 May 2024) was an English author, designer, journalist, and social entrepreneur.

After Conran's marriage to Terence Conran, with whom she worked as a designer and sales director at Conran Fabrics, she became women's editor of The Observer and the Daily Mail, launching its Femail section. After a serious illness left her with ME, making it difficult for her to work, she wrote best-selling books including the feminist self-help Superwoman (1975) and the bonkbuster Lace (1982).

In later life, Conran campaigned and founded charities to encourage maths education for women. For this, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and was invested in hospital a week before her death.

Early life Conran was born as Shirley Ida Pearce on 21 September 1932 in the Municipal Borough of Hendon, Middlesex, to Ida and Thirlby Pearce. She attended St Paul's Girls' School and then a finishing school in Switzerland, which later provided some inspiration for the fictional school L'Hirondelle in her 1982 novel Lace. Her father ran a prosperous dry-cleaners but was violent when drunk and forced her to leave home at 19 to earn a living. She was taken back after two months after her failure to get a job resulted in malnutrition but her mother gave her a weekly allowance of £3 and she left again in a month. Now thin, she worked as an artist's model and used the income to train as a sculptor at Portsmouth College of Art and as a painter at Chelsea Polytechnic.

Career Terence Conran ran a café in Chelsea and they married in 1955. She worked with him as a fabric designer and they had two children – Jasper and Sebastian – who have since become designers too. Her husband was unfaithful and refused to reform and so she divorced him.

Following the breakdown of her marriage, Conran turned to writing in order to support her children.

Honours Conran was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Truss resignation honours list for services to mathematics education as the founder of the Maths Anxiety Trust.

Works Fiction Lace (Simon & Schuster, 1982) Lace 2 (1985) The Complete Story (omnibus, 1986) Savages (1987, movie rights owned by Warner Bros. but never made) The Amazing Umbrella Shop (1990 – children's book co-authored with her children Jasper and Sebastian Conran) Crimson (1992) Tiger Eyes (1994) The Revenge (aka Revenge of Mimi Quinn, 1998)

Non-fiction Superwoman (1975) Superwoman 2 (1977) Superwoman in Action (1979) Futurewoman: How to Survive Life After Thirty (1981) The Magic Garden (1983) Down with Superwoman: For Everyone Who Hates Housework (1990) Money Stuff (2014)

Other The Magic Garden was adapted as a computer program and published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro as Shirley Conran's Magic Garden in 1983.