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Melanie McFadyean
Melanie McFadyean (24 November 1950 – 16 March 2023) was a British journalist and lecturer. She wrote for a wide range of papers, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times and The Independent, particularly about asylum, immigration and human rights issues.
In the 1980s, McFadyean was a notable advice columnist for young people, serving as agony aunt (1983–1986) of Just Seventeen teen magazine, and going on to become editor of The Guardian newspaper's "Young Guardian" page. In her career as an investigative journalist, she was the recipient of awards such as the Amnesty International UK Media Award and the Bar Council's Legal Reporting Award. Also an educator, she worked as a part-time lecturer in journalism at City University, London.
Melanie McFadyean was born in London, England, on 24 November 1950, the second daughter of Marion (née Guttman) and Colin McFadyean. Her father was an international business lawyer who served as a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during World War II, and was later recruited as a naval interrogator by Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond) to Britain's Naval Intelligence Division. At the end of World War II, Colin became head of the section and was involved in reading the terms of surrender to Admiral Karl Dönitz (Hitler's successor) in Flensburg.
McFadyean's mother, Marion, was a German-Jewish refugee and artist from the prominent Dresden banking family who fled to England from Nazi Germany in 1937. During World War II, she worked for a unit, forging documents for use behind enemy lines, but would later earn her living in everything from picture restoration to garden design.
McFadyean's parents were married from 1940 until 1960, after which her father married the post-war BBC television announcer Mary Malcolm who became known for her spoonerisms. McFadyean wrote about the struggles faced by her father in later life to cope with her stepmother's debilitating dementia and the disease in general.
McFadyean was educated at two all-girls independent boarding schools, at Sherborne School for Girls in North Dorset initially, before being expelled after a year, about which she recalled: "It was such a degenerate and lawless place that I had to go in search of the rules in order to break them. It took me two and a half years to get expelled." She then joined her elder sister at the former Cranborne Chase School, near Tisbury, Wiltshire, and later graduated from the University of Leeds with a first-class BA degree in English in 1974, followed by an MA.
After McFadyean left university in 1974 and returned to London, she had various jobs as a waitress, office girl, market researcher on trains and youth worker, before teaching art at a school in Hackney, East London. She switched to teaching English at Hackney College of Further Education in 1976. From the late 1970s, she contributed news articles to Womens Voice (1972–1982), a monthly socialist-feminist newspaper/magazine and organisation that fought for women's liberation. She also went to Belfast in 1979, to understand and write about women's lives in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
Working with her close friend Bert MacIver, McFadyean was involved in the launch of his monthly teen music magazine Kicks (1981–82). Receiving 12,000 letters a year in her postbag, she was the popular '80s agony aunt for the bestselling British teen-girl magazine Just Seventeen, aka J-17, from its inception in 1983 until 1986. Her "Dear Melanie" advice column brought comfort and practical advice to otherwise uninformed teenage girls (and sometimes boys). She supplied the introduction to the 1987 British AIDS education leaflet Love Carefully: Use a condom, with a cartoon strip, and statements from celebrities, which was given a second edition in 1990.
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Melanie McFadyean
Melanie McFadyean (24 November 1950 – 16 March 2023) was a British journalist and lecturer. She wrote for a wide range of papers, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times and The Independent, particularly about asylum, immigration and human rights issues.
In the 1980s, McFadyean was a notable advice columnist for young people, serving as agony aunt (1983–1986) of Just Seventeen teen magazine, and going on to become editor of The Guardian newspaper's "Young Guardian" page. In her career as an investigative journalist, she was the recipient of awards such as the Amnesty International UK Media Award and the Bar Council's Legal Reporting Award. Also an educator, she worked as a part-time lecturer in journalism at City University, London.
Melanie McFadyean was born in London, England, on 24 November 1950, the second daughter of Marion (née Guttman) and Colin McFadyean. Her father was an international business lawyer who served as a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during World War II, and was later recruited as a naval interrogator by Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond) to Britain's Naval Intelligence Division. At the end of World War II, Colin became head of the section and was involved in reading the terms of surrender to Admiral Karl Dönitz (Hitler's successor) in Flensburg.
McFadyean's mother, Marion, was a German-Jewish refugee and artist from the prominent Dresden banking family who fled to England from Nazi Germany in 1937. During World War II, she worked for a unit, forging documents for use behind enemy lines, but would later earn her living in everything from picture restoration to garden design.
McFadyean's parents were married from 1940 until 1960, after which her father married the post-war BBC television announcer Mary Malcolm who became known for her spoonerisms. McFadyean wrote about the struggles faced by her father in later life to cope with her stepmother's debilitating dementia and the disease in general.
McFadyean was educated at two all-girls independent boarding schools, at Sherborne School for Girls in North Dorset initially, before being expelled after a year, about which she recalled: "It was such a degenerate and lawless place that I had to go in search of the rules in order to break them. It took me two and a half years to get expelled." She then joined her elder sister at the former Cranborne Chase School, near Tisbury, Wiltshire, and later graduated from the University of Leeds with a first-class BA degree in English in 1974, followed by an MA.
After McFadyean left university in 1974 and returned to London, she had various jobs as a waitress, office girl, market researcher on trains and youth worker, before teaching art at a school in Hackney, East London. She switched to teaching English at Hackney College of Further Education in 1976. From the late 1970s, she contributed news articles to Womens Voice (1972–1982), a monthly socialist-feminist newspaper/magazine and organisation that fought for women's liberation. She also went to Belfast in 1979, to understand and write about women's lives in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
Working with her close friend Bert MacIver, McFadyean was involved in the launch of his monthly teen music magazine Kicks (1981–82). Receiving 12,000 letters a year in her postbag, she was the popular '80s agony aunt for the bestselling British teen-girl magazine Just Seventeen, aka J-17, from its inception in 1983 until 1986. Her "Dear Melanie" advice column brought comfort and practical advice to otherwise uninformed teenage girls (and sometimes boys). She supplied the introduction to the 1987 British AIDS education leaflet Love Carefully: Use a condom, with a cartoon strip, and statements from celebrities, which was given a second edition in 1990.