Eileen Ascroft

Eileen Ascroft was a journalist and writer. Her first husband was celebrated film-maker, Alexander Mackendrick, who produced Whisky Galore, The Ladykillers and A High Wind in Jamaica among other projects. Ascroft worked as a journalist at the Daily Mirror where she met her second husband, Hugh Cudlipp. In her book about Cudlipp, "Newspapermen", Ruth Dudley Edwards describes Eileen as ‘blonde, talented and ambitious’ [Edwards, Ruth Dudley: "Newspapermen", Secker and Warburg, 2003] . Ascroft was sacked from the Mirror by the Editorial Director, Harry Guy Bartholomew for using his oak office door as a dartboard [ Cudlipp, Hugh "Walking on the Water" Bodley Head, 1976 ] . She was responsible for starting the Woman’s page at the Evening Standard. She and Hugh went on to become the most powerful couple on Fleet Street: ‘The combined power of Mr and Mrs Cudlipp over the livelihoods of hundreds, maybe thousands, of newspaper men and woman, even benevolently exercised as they have always been, are going to be immense and terrifying’ [ New Statesman, 3 February 1961 ] . As well as a lifetime spent in journalism she also navigated her husband's motor-cruiser in cross-Channel expeditions, and could also pilot an aeroplane, having learnt to do so in an idle spell in Australia [ The Times, 1 May 1962 ] .

Interestingly, for a successful journalist carving out a glittering career for herself in a traditionally masculine industry Eileen’s book, "The Magic Key to Charm", is a tutorial in all the traditional feminine virtues. It was published in 1938 and was made up of a collection of her immensely popular column in the Mirror, "Charm School". Tragically, in 1962, Eileen Ascroft died of an overdose of sleeping pills.

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