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This is taken from The Guardian, November 17,2005:
Jane Carrington
by Rick Fountain Thursday November 17, 2005
Inside the BBC there are probably few to whom the name of Jane Carrington, who has died aged 74, is familiar. Perhaps there are more among the alumni of the Bush House newsroom, dotted around the globe, who remember her with affection and regard. To them, and to the veterans of the most authoritative radio news machine the world has seen, she was simply "Jane".
Her role in the World Service newsroom might appear, on paper, rather like Samuel Johnson's definition of a lexicographer - "a harmless drudge" who shifted the names on her slips of paper to meet the requirements of the newsroom rota.
But the reality was often atrociously complex, a semi-continuous juggling of a 24-hour, 365-day schedule, which had to take into account the talents, vanities, foibles and failings of a large body of men and women, editors, writers and producers whose working lives had sometimes to be abruptly rearranged, all in a year-round context of coughs and sneezes, leaves on the line, wrong kinds of snow and, occasionally, the wrong kind of people. To survive and succeed, and to be loved in an atmosphere sometimes so jealous and exacting - as Jane did for almost three decades - demands humour, resourcefulness, tact and stamina.
Jane was disabled by poliomyelitis during her Oxfordshire childhood in the 1930s, and her physical frailty accelerated as she aged. She rarely spoke of it, and was a cheerful and friendly companion, endowed with fortitude and the occasional flash of fire and steel that might be expected from one so socially distinguished. She was a niece of Dora Carrington, the sister of another artist, Joanna (sometimes known as Reginald Pepper), and daughter of the co-founder of Puffin Books, Noel Carrington.
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