“Pat was utterly refined in intellect and personality. In our corridors she

spread a combination, an unusual one, of peace and vigorous enquiry round

her -- so that if you found yourself next to her at lunch, say, you felt

straightaway profoundly at ease and yet quizzed on anything and all that you

said... Never invasively, just from friendly and, above all, homorously

intelligent and as I say refined curiosity about everything. You knew that

you were both challenged and safe. It made her a totally admired and beloved

colleague. On a Thursday, she would always pick up some wrong or

inconsistent thing because she never read anything as given -- and yet I

cannot imagine, such was the peaceful benevolence and humour in her

personality, anybody ever feeling threatened by her undoubted toughness of

mind and integrity  when she approached with a question that would, almost

invariably, require a clear answer or a change to what had been drafted --

or both.

 

She was quite lovely: to look at, to be with, and to talk with, very strong

yet without malice or threat. The description from Catherine Haddon of her

place and affection in the family comes, though I did not know it, as no

surprise. I bet she will be hugely missed there, yet always with a smile. I

just cannot get to the funeral, I wish I could, and I do hope somebody of

rank is there from The Econ. Pat is one of that tiny precious band through

and after the war without whom those of us who have made careers as part of

the modern public success of the paper just would not have had it there in

the form it came down [or, rather, up] to us and our successors.

 

Pat also had, lest I sound too hagiographical, that characteristic touch of

breezy, laughing arrogance that went with a time of lesser journalistic

earnestness than the one we now live in. This particularly belonged to the

wartime Economist. Their paper was put together by a handfull of people on

short rations, and yet carried authority. I once asked the female star of

that generation, a friend to Presidents etc etc, Barbara Ward, how the hell

she, Geoffrey, Margaret Cruickshank, Pat Norton and so few others got out a

weekly paper of such authority and with so much information in it: "Quite

easy, dear Andrew," she said, "we made it all up". I mentioned Barbara's

remark to Pat and Margaret at the typesetters one day: they were a bit

shocked, for the reason, in part, that they knew they could not argue with

it.”

 

Andrew Knight, Editor, The Economist 1974 - 1986