Sylvia Schofield

Sylvia Anne Schofield (née Terry-Smith; 28 May 1916 – 2 March 2006) was a British writer and traveller. She had a long and varied career, and her The Daily Telegraph obituary described her as, "an agony aunt, wartime intelligence operative, honorary colonel in the US Military Police, advertising copywriter, mystery novelist, photographer, archaeologist, and intrepid traveller."

Early life She was born Sylvia Anne Terry Smith on 28 May 1916, at 113 Ramsden Road, Balham, London, the elder daughter of William Horace Smith, an architect and chartered surveyor, and his wife, Annie Smith, née Terry, a Salvation Army officer. She was educated at Wimbledon Technical College until the age of 16.

Personal life On 19 December 1941, she married Angus Matheson (1912–1962), son of Malcolm Matheson, a church minister in the Outer Hebrides, at Kingston and Surbiton Presbyterian Church. They divorced in 1950. Matheson would later become professor of Celtic languages and literatures at the University of Glasgow.

In 1956, she married Henry Beaumont Schofield (1916–1990), a petroleum engineer she met while reporting on the discovery of the Sui gas field in Pakistan's Bugti tribal area.