It is time, past time, to acknowledge the demise on 25 June this Summer of the great Ann Leslie at the age of 82.
Dame Ann Leslie DBE was a Board Member of the Next Century Foundation. Born Elizabeth Mary Leslie in Rawalpindi, India (in what is now modern-day Pakistan) on 28 January 1941, Ann was a close friend and supporter of the NCF as well as, of course, being one of the world’s greatest and best known journalists. She reported from more than seventy countries on stories covering the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, Nelson Mandela’s release, civil wars in Zimbabwe, El Salvador, and Yugoslavia, and the Falklands. She was awarded her DBE in 2007 for services to journalism. She won nine British Press awards including one for an Outstanding Contribution to Journalism at the eighth annual International Media Awards in London on 5 May 2012 (see below). She was recognised as one of the BBC’s 100 women of 2013.
Ann’s longstanding engagement with the NCF began in earnest when she joined a critically important NCF delegation to Israel and Palestine in 2004. On that occasion she was one of the last people to see Yasser Arafat before, in the view of many of us party to those last days, he was assassinated.
Adventurous
Traveling with Ann was a revelation. She almost always wore her trademark black mascara and had many of the eccentricities that were the hallmark of many of the more idiosyncratic female journalists of her era. She once used a Marks and Spencer petticoat to fly as a white flag on her car whilst covering the civil war in El Salvador. She had the impressive habit of keeping her cellphone in her bra, for safety against loss (along with any confidential documents she needed to hide), in preference to being encumbered with a bag. She was always ready to throw a cheerful smile and considerate word to the more vulnerable amongst those she met.
In common with the greatest among us, she treated Prince and pauper alike, having time for one and all. But her kind and compassionate nature came hand in hand with an acerbic wit. She was not a woman to suffer fools gladly and had strong opinions which she never hesitated to express.
Loved
Loved and respected by all that knew her well, Ann would be, and indeed was the first to acknowledge that, like most of us, she had her own demons, alcohol being one of them as she told the world in her biography, “Killing my own snakes”. But her honesty and openness meant that her personal battles were an example to all that knew her well.
Her greatest battle was her fight with cancer, a disease that snatched her away this Summer before her time. Ann was an inspiration. All that knew her loved her. I doubt whether we shall ever see her like again. Few have been as outspoken as Dame Ann Leslie. She was undoubtedly one of Britain’s most famous and formidable journalists.
She cut her teeth at the Daily Express, where she got her first job after reading English at Oxford, subsequently moving to the Mail where she became one of Britain’s most highly paid journalists. The tough assignments she took on as senior Foreign Correspondent of the Daily Mail were hugely impressive. There was no risk she would not take for a good story. Viscount Rothermere, who owned the Daily Mail, described her as having, “The courage of a lion”.
We hugely miss Ann Leslie. This is a smaller world without her. She made a difference.
She leaves a husband, Michael Fletcher, and a much loved daughter, Katharine, and two grandchildren, Joseph and Martha. She listed her recreation in Who’s Who as family life.
