Katharine Elizabeth Whitehorn (2 March 1928 – 8 January 2021) was a British journalist, columnist, author and radio presenter. She was the first woman to have a column in The Observer, which ran from 1963 to 1996 and from 2011 to 2017. She was the first female rector of a university in Scotland. Her books include Cooking in a Bedsitter (1961). Early life Whitehorn was born in Hendon on 2 March 1928. Her family was on the left of the political spectrum and nonconformist, with her father being a conscientious objector and her mother having secured a place to study at the University of Cambridge. Her maternal great-grandfather was the final person to be charged with heresy by the Church of Scotland; he was ultimately acquitted. Whitehorn was educated at the private Roedean School near Brighton, and Glasgow High School for Girls. She went on to read English at Newnham College, Cambridge. After graduation, she worked as a freelancer in London, before moving to Finland to teach English and undertaking postgraduate studies at Cornell University. Career Journalism, writing and broadcasting Whitehorn started her career in journalism covering fashion, and was a sub-editor for the Woman's Own women's magazine in 1956, when the Picture Post photographer Bert Hardy asked her to model for him. He photographed her for a story on loneliness in London, and one photograph of her sitting by a fire with a cigarette, as if thinking to write an article instead of being lonely, became an advertisement for the energy drink Lucozade. On Hardy's recommendation, she got a job writing for the Picture Post, where her future husband, Gavin Lyall, also worked. After it closed in 1957, she briefly worked for various publications, including The Spectator, before joining The Observer in 1960, initially as fashion editor, although her article about "Widow's Might" was a valuable contribution to the emerging help for widows. She was promoted to an Observer columnist in 1963, becoming the first woman to write a column in that newspaper. Her column proved popular with readers, and she continued to write it until 1996, working partly from home, which was unusual at the time. From 1997 to 2016, she wrote a monthly agony aunt column for Saga Magazine. Whitehorn's column was reinstated in The Observer magazine by John Mulholland in 2011 and continued to appear until 2017. Her initial book, Cooking in a Bedsitter (originally Kitchen