35 Facts About Melanie McFadyean

Melanie McFadyean was a British journalist and lecturer.

Melanie McFadyean wrote for a wide range of papers, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times and The Independent, particularly about asylum, immigration and human rights issues.

Melanie McFadyean was born in London, England, on 24 November 1950, the second daughter of Marion and Colin McFadyean.

Melanie McFadyean's father was an international business lawyer who served as a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during World War II, and was later recruited as a naval interrogator by Ian Fleming to Britain's Naval Intelligence Division.

Melanie McFadyean's mother, Marion, was a German-Jewish refugee and artist from the prominent Dresden banking family who fled to England from Nazi Germany in 1937.

Melanie McFadyean's parents were married from 1940 until 1960, after which her father married the post-war BBC television announcer Mary Malcolm who became known for her spoonerisms.

Melanie McFadyean wrote about the struggles faced by her father in later life to cope with her stepmother's debilitating dementia and the disease in general.

Melanie McFadyean switched to teaching English at Hackney College of Further Education in 1976.

Melanie McFadyean went to Belfast in 1979, to understand and write about women's lives in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Melanie McFadyean supplied the introduction to the 1987 British AIDS education leaflet Love Carefully: Use a condom, with a cartoon strip, and statements from celebrities, which was given a second edition in 1990.

From 1991, Melanie McFadyean freelanced for The Guardian and in television, radio, and mostly in print for numerous newspapers, such as The Observer, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, and Daily Mirror.

Melanie McFadyean contributed to many magazines and organisations, including The Guardian Weekly, The Sunday Times Magazine, Times Higher Education, New Society, New Statesman, City Limits, Company, London Review of Books, Granta, openDemocracy, Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Honey, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, and The Oldie.

Melanie McFadyean conducted numerous interviews with notable campaigners, celebrities and writers during the course of her journalistic career.

Melanie McFadyean interviewed for the paper British actress Julie Christie, Kurdish activist Sheri Laizer, and Lisa Taylor, one of the two sisters wrongly imprisoned for the murder of Alison Shaughnessy.

Melanie McFadyean was herself interviewed by the British historian and espionage writer Helen Fry in relation to her parents' top-secret World War II past.

Melanie McFadyean escaped but she had an aunt and an uncle who didn't, so I grew up with it, knowledge of refugees.

Melanie McFadyean highlighted other issues, such as foreign prisoners in British jails, the detention and deportation of child migrants, and whether Gulf War syndrome in soldiers was the result of exposure to chemical warfare agents.

From 2001 to 2015, Melanie McFadyean was a part-time lecturer in journalism at City University, London.

Melanie McFadyean ran the Investigative MA and later taught on the Magazine MA.

Melanie McFadyean made two appearances on the British television review programme Did You See.

Melanie McFadyean was the 21-month-old child who vanished from the Greek island of Kos in 1991.

Melanie McFadyean's reporting on the case was widely commented upon and commended by other journalists.

Melanie McFadyean co-wrote, with Nick Davies, The Boy Business of the Network First documentary about British paedophiles who prey on homeless and vulnerable children, broadcast by ITV on 26 March 1997.

Melanie McFadyean was consultant producer on the documentary film Guilty by Association, produced by Fran Robertson and broadcast by BBC One on 7 July 2014.

Melanie McFadyean served on the panel of judges for the Amnesty International Media Awards.

Melanie McFadyean wrote a father-daughter contribution, "Looking for Daddy", for the anthology Fathers: Reflections by Daughters, edited by Ursula Owen.

Melanie McFadyean co-wrote, with Eileen Fairweather and Roisin McDonough, Only The Rivers Run Free: Northern Ireland: The Women's War, described by The Women's Review of Books as "passionate, compelling and absolutely necessary".

Melanie McFadyean co-authored, with Margaret Renn, a compilation of Margaret Thatcher and Conservative quotes entitled Thatcher's Reign: A Bad Case of the Blues, arranged and annotated by subject and date.

In 1990, Melanie McFadyean had a son with her long-term partner Malcolm Blair, a builder whom she met in Hackney and married in 2007.

Melanie McFadyean wrote an evocative and picturesque travelogue about their trip to his native New Zealand to usher in the new millennium when she reviewed the Aucklander Charlotte Grimshaw's debut crime novel, Provocation, and second upcoming novel, Guilt, for The Guardian.

From 2011 to 2023, Melanie McFadyean was a trustee of the Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile, a charity that offers a clinical and support service to young asylum seekers and refugees: children, adolescents and young adults and sometimes to parents and families.

In 2005, Melanie McFadyean was first diagnosed with breast cancer after a routine mammogram, and wrote a witty and incisive cancer journal of her ordeal from onset to remission in The Guardian that was widely commented upon.

In 2006, Melanie McFadyean gave the reasons for writing the cancer diary the previous year and wished that people with other cancers would write about them more.

In 2019, Melanie McFadyean had recurrent cancer in the form of metastatic breast cancer that had spread to her lungs, liver and brain, but which appeared to be in remission and under control.

Melanie McFadyean died in London, England, from cancer on 16 March 2023, at the age of 72.