Midgley has written of her belief that she is "lucky" to have missed out in having a doctorate. She argues that one of the main flaws in doctoral training is that, while it "shows you how to deal with difficult arguments", it does not "help you to grasp the big questions that provide its context – the background issues out of which the small problems arose." In 1949 Midgley went to Reading University, teaching in the philosophy department there for four terms. In 1950 she married Geoffrey Midgley (died 1997), also a philosopher. They moved to Newcastle, where he got a job in the philosophy department of Newcastle University. Midgley stopped teaching for several years while she had three sons (Tom, David and Martin), before also getting a job in the philosophy department at Newcastle, where she and her husband were both "much loved". Midgley taught there between 1962 and 1980. During her time at Newcastle, she began studying ethology and this led to her first book, Beast and Man (1978), published when she was 59. "I wrote no books until I was a good 50, and I'm jolly glad because I didn't know what I thought before then." Awards Midgley was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by Durham University in 1995 and an honorary Doctor of Civil Law by Newcastle University in 2008. She was an honorary fellow of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre at Newcastle University. In 2011 she was the first winner of the Philosophy Now Award for Contributions in the Fight Against Stupidity. Death Midgley died at the age of 99 in Jesmond on 10 October 2018. Ideas and arguments The purpose of philosophy Midgley argued that philosophy is like plumbing, something that nobody notices until it goes wrong. "Then suddenly we become aware of some bad smells, and we have to take up the floorboards and look at the concepts of even the most ordinary piece of thinking. The great philosophers ... noticed how badly things were going wrong, and made suggestions about how they could be dealt with." Midgley argued that philosophy was not something that was reserved for intellectuals and academics. In her view, it is something we all do — an activity that is part of the human conditions. Philosophy and religion Despite her upbringing, she did not embrace Christianity herself, because, she says, "I couldn't make it work. I