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Claire Rayner
Claire Berenice Rayner, OBE (/ˈreɪnər/; née Berkovitch, later Chetwynd; 22 January 1931 – 11 October 2010) was an English journalist, broadcaster, novelist and nurse, best known for her role for many years as an advice columnist.
Rayner was born to Jewish parents in Stepney, London, the eldest of four children. Her father was a tailor and her mother a housewife. Her father had adopted the surname Chetwynd, under which name she was educated at the City of London School for Girls.
Rayner's autobiography, How Did I Get Here from There?, was published in 2003, and revealed details of a childhood marred by physical and mental cruelty at the hands of her parents. After the family emigrated to Canada, in 1945 she was placed in a psychiatric hospital by her parents, and treated for 15 months for a thyroid defect.
Returning to the UK in 1951, Rayner trained as a nurse at the Royal Northern Hospital and Guy's Hospital in London. She intended to become a physician; while training as a nurse, however, she met actor Desmond Rayner, whom she married in 1957. The couple lived in London and Claire worked as a midwife and later nursing sister.
Rayner wrote her first letter to Nursing Times in 1958, on nurses' pay and conditions. She then began regularly writing to The Daily Telegraph on themes of patient care or nurses' pay. She began writing novels soon after her marriage, and by 1968 had published more than 25 books.
The birth of her first child in 1960 meant that she found full-time nursing difficult, and so focused on a full-time writing career. Initially writing articles for magazines and publications, in 1968 she published one of the earliest sex manuals, People in Love, which brought her to national attention. Despite the "explicit" content, the work was commended for its "down-to-earth" and "sensible" approach.
By the 1970s, Rayner had established herself in writing for Woman's Own as one of four new and direct "agony aunts", alongside Marjorie Proops, Peggy Makins (aka Evelyn Home) at Woman and J. Firbank of Forum. Her advice in the teenaged girls' magazine Petticoat caused controversy. In 1972, she was accused of "encouraging masturbation and promiscuity in prepubescent girls". Her direct and frank approach led the BBC to ask her to be the first person on British pre-watershed television to demonstrate how to put on a condom, and she was one of the first people used by advertisers to promote sanitary towels.
The year after beginning to appear on Pebble Mill at One, Rayner started an agony column in The Sun in 1973, but left to join the Sunday Mirror in 1980, when she also made her second television series of Claire Rayner's Casebook. She left the Sunday Mirror shortly after the appointment of Eve Pollard as editor, and joined the Today newspaper for three years. Rayner was named medical journalist of the year in 1987.
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Claire Rayner
Claire Berenice Rayner, OBE (/ˈreɪnər/; née Berkovitch, later Chetwynd; 22 January 1931 – 11 October 2010) was an English journalist, broadcaster, novelist and nurse, best known for her role for many years as an advice columnist.
Rayner was born to Jewish parents in Stepney, London, the eldest of four children. Her father was a tailor and her mother a housewife. Her father had adopted the surname Chetwynd, under which name she was educated at the City of London School for Girls.
Rayner's autobiography, How Did I Get Here from There?, was published in 2003, and revealed details of a childhood marred by physical and mental cruelty at the hands of her parents. After the family emigrated to Canada, in 1945 she was placed in a psychiatric hospital by her parents, and treated for 15 months for a thyroid defect.
Returning to the UK in 1951, Rayner trained as a nurse at the Royal Northern Hospital and Guy's Hospital in London. She intended to become a physician; while training as a nurse, however, she met actor Desmond Rayner, whom she married in 1957. The couple lived in London and Claire worked as a midwife and later nursing sister.
Rayner wrote her first letter to Nursing Times in 1958, on nurses' pay and conditions. She then began regularly writing to The Daily Telegraph on themes of patient care or nurses' pay. She began writing novels soon after her marriage, and by 1968 had published more than 25 books.
The birth of her first child in 1960 meant that she found full-time nursing difficult, and so focused on a full-time writing career. Initially writing articles for magazines and publications, in 1968 she published one of the earliest sex manuals, People in Love, which brought her to national attention. Despite the "explicit" content, the work was commended for its "down-to-earth" and "sensible" approach.
By the 1970s, Rayner had established herself in writing for Woman's Own as one of four new and direct "agony aunts", alongside Marjorie Proops, Peggy Makins (aka Evelyn Home) at Woman and J. Firbank of Forum. Her advice in the teenaged girls' magazine Petticoat caused controversy. In 1972, she was accused of "encouraging masturbation and promiscuity in prepubescent girls". Her direct and frank approach led the BBC to ask her to be the first person on British pre-watershed television to demonstrate how to put on a condom, and she was one of the first people used by advertisers to promote sanitary towels.
The year after beginning to appear on Pebble Mill at One, Rayner started an agony column in The Sun in 1973, but left to join the Sunday Mirror in 1980, when she also made her second television series of Claire Rayner's Casebook. She left the Sunday Mirror shortly after the appointment of Eve Pollard as editor, and joined the Today newspaper for three years. Rayner was named medical journalist of the year in 1987.