Memorial Service: Hilary Alexander OBE (1946-2023)
Charles Moore, Hilary Alexander’s editor at the Daily Telegraph, read the first lesson at her thanksgiving service at
St Bride’s, Fleet Street. She was fashion editor at the Telegraph for 23 years.
Julia Robson, Hilary’s deputy for many years, led the tributes for her colleague. She recalled how Hilary was brought up in Napier, New Zealand, and as a child wasn’t particularly interested in fashion.
She wanted to be an archaeologist, but her father found her a job on a local paper before she moved to Australia to work on the Ballarat Courier. Later she went to Hong Kong, where she joined the
China Mail as a news reporter, later becoming fashion editor. Robson said, ‘The distance
between Napier and Fleet Street is about 11,500 miles. This was never going to stop
Hilary from pursuing her dream to work on the most important
street in the world for newspapers. ‘As a fashion intern, I walked into the
oak-panelled, rabbit-warren offices of 135 Fleet Street – the same that had inspired Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop – and met Hilary, queen of scoops, in the fashion cupboard.’
Robson said, ‘Hilary popped up like a jack-in-the-box, ciggie in hand, and pointed to my Doc Martens boots. An hour later, she had taken them off for a
fashion shoot. I had to catch the tube home that night in my socks.
‘She was a hands-on locomotive of a journalist with a newspaper knowledge of world affairs who wore a jingle-jangle necklace and a gypsy skirt.’
Hilary’s friend Carol Griffiths recalled their hair-raising travel adventures through the west of Scotland. She didn’t drive but she liked taxis.
The choir sang Edward Elgar’s Lux Æterna, Mozart’s Alleluia, Gilbert & Sullivan’s I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General and Queen’s Who Wants to Live for Ever? The congregation sang the hymns Lord of All Hopefulness, Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven and Jerusalem.
JAMES HUGHES-ONSLOW
