Katharine Whitehorn pioneered the first of the personal columns. She told us how it really was. She was funny - and smart. The Observer's star columnist for 40 years, she is also famous for Cooking in a Bedsitter. Much loved for her frankness and honesty, her autobiography is about family, studying at Roedean, work on Fleet Street and about her long marriage to the recently deceased crime writer Gavin Lyall. 'Marriage is the water in which you swim, the land you live in . . . once a widow you have to learn to live in another country in which you are an unwelcome refugee.