Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Joey Gallo returns, but Nats endure another quiet offensive night

Walter Johnson’s jersey from 1920 showdown with Babe Ruth sold at auction

Bryce Harper, Joey Gallo and a bond forged by baseball since they were kids

Zelensky’s chief aide flexes power, irks critics — and makes no apologies

IDF recovers bodies of 3 Israelis killed on Oct. 7

With its energy network nearly destroyed, Ukraine already fears the winter

Book Tour: At home with Amor Towles

In photos: The scene in Houston after severe storms killed at least 7 people

Deadly storm blasts Houston

Blue Origin to fly again as space tourism struggles to get off the ground

Why this company’s biggest fans turned against it

Boeing delays spaceflight again as it continues to struggle with leak

How Jim Jordan tried to connect the dots on Biden’s $8 million book deal

‘Never Trump?’ ‘Never Biden’ voters might loom larger.

Ukraine gamble pays off: Republicans face little backlash in primaries

She finished chemo then got a medical degree: ‘The dream is real now’

Puppy abandoned with heart-rending note is adopted, named Minerva

Man, 91, shocks tiny firehouse with $500K gift: ‘Nobody knew how much I’d saved’

Biden’s false claim that inflation was 9 percent when he took office

Did Obamacare ‘massively’ increase the cost of health care?

The world’s coolest hotels want to tell you a story

Cruise ships to return to Baltimore two months after bridge collapse 

Some cruise prices are about to get a little more clear

At campus protests, ‘DO NOT TALK TO THE MEDIA’!

CNN gets a presidential debate — and a much-needed win

Netflix will air NFL’s Christmas games, a major step for streaming service

Russia shows resilience. There is more to do for Ukraine.

Trump promises tax cuts and fewer rules. CEOs shouldn’t fall for it.

Tariffs against China hamstring the transition to a clean energy future

Carolyn Hax: Is it weird to ask other people to care about you?

Ask Amy: Can’t a single woman eat alone without interruption?

Miss Manners: Miss Manners: Gag gift falls flat

Trump

Fiona Hanson

Fay Weldon, a mischievous and prolific British author who explored women’s lives and relationships in novels such as “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil,” challenging assumptions about gender, love and domesticity while acquiring a reputation as both a feminist and an anti-feminist, died Jan. 4 at a nursing home in Northampton, England.<b> </b>She was 91.

Her son Dan confirmed the death. Ms. Weldon “had a number of strokes,” he said in an email, but was still working until her death, “writing poems in her head and dictating slowly.”

A highly public author with an easy laugh and a distinctive blond bob, Ms. Weldon wrote more than 30 novels as well as short-story collections, children’s books, and television, radio and stage plays. Her work was filled with acerbic humor, sexual satire and farcical scenarios, distinguished by an understated literary style that she described as “completely practical and always precise.”

Much of it was also semi-autobiographical — inspired, she said, by her “mildly scandalous” early life, which included a nomadic upbringing in New Zealand and England, single motherhood at age 22, and a marriage to a high school headmaster who, according to Ms. Weldon, pimped her out to friends and advised her to get a job as an escort.

Popperfoto

At age 35, she “stopped living and started writing instead, as a serious person,” as she put in her 2002 autobiography “Auto Da Fay.” While sitting on the stairs so she could keep an eye on her young children (she had four sons in all, her last at age 47), she wrote screenplays for shows including “Upstairs, Downstairs,” an acclaimed period drama about English servants and their masters, winning a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award for writing the 1971 pilot.

She also began publishing wry novels and family dramas, defying literary convention by populating her books with protagonists who were women rather than men, plump rather than petite. She later recalled that male writers were furious that she dared to write about issues like dieting and marriage, telling <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6870921/FAYE-WELDON-reveals-secret-happy-marriage.html" target=_blank>the Daily Mail</a>: “Men would walk out of rooms when I walked in because they were so angry and upset that women were no longer willing to iron men’s shirts.”

Soon her books were climbing bestseller lists in Britain and receiving praise on both sides of the Atlantic.

Her novel “Praxis” (1978), about the shifting mind-set of a woman with a rickety childhood, two unsuccessful marriages, a career as a prostitute and an incestuous relationship, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award. Ms. Weldon was vaulted to greater fame with her novel “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil” (1983), about a lantern-jawed woman named Ruth who, driven by envy and a desire for revenge, undergoes plastic surgery to look like her husband’s lover.

“It affords a scintillating, mind-boggling, vicarious thrill for any reader who has ever fantasized dishing out retribution for one wrong or another,” New York Times reviewer Rosalyn Drexler <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/weldon-shedevil.html" target=_blank>wrote</a>. The book was adapted into a prizewinning BBC miniseries and a much-maligned Hollywood movie, “She-Devil” (1989), starring Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr. Decades later, Guardian journalist Claire Armistead <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/31/fay-weldon-interview-feminism-death-of-a-she-devil" target=_blank>said </a>the novel “licensed a generation of second-wave feminists to own their inner demon.”

“It seemed to me when I wrote [the novel] that women were so much in the habit of being good,” Ms. Weldon <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/05/gender.religion" target=_blank>told the Guardian</a>, “it would do nobody any harm if they learned to be a little bad — that is to say, burn down their houses, give away their children, put their husband in prison, steal his money and turn themselves into their husband’s mistress.”

Yet Ms. Weldon also came to believe that the feminist movement had gone astray, with women too often claiming the role of victim. To the horror of many longtime allies, she told <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/122813.stm" target=_blank>a radio interviewer in 1998</a> that rape “isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a woman,” arguing that society “glamorizes” sexual assault by viewing it as especially horrific. She <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cocktail-hour-with-fay-weldon-g5jgv6mk7" target=_blank>later questioned</a> the significance of the pay gap between men and women, declared that men had become casualties of the gender war, and appeared to be skeptical of transgender rights, saying that because “women have it better than men,” some men were “fighting back by becoming women themselves.”

Still, she continued to champion women’s liberation, and it was often difficult to tell when she was expressing her genuine beliefs or simply trying to provoke and entertain. Laughing through interviews, she acknowledged fabricating stories and details about her life to liven up the conversation, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/aug/22/fay-weldon-interview-saturday" target=_blank>estimated</a> that “about 60 percent” of what she told journalists was true. In some cases, it seemed that Ms. Weldon herself was unsure of what had really happened; at the very least, she was struggling to make sense of it.

“I long for a day of judgment when the plot lines of our lives will be neatly tied, and all puzzles explained, and the meaning of events made clear,” she wrote at the opening of her autobiography. “We take to fiction, I suppose, because no such thing is going to happen, and at least on the printed page we can observe beginnings, middles and ends, and can find where morality resides.”

Mirrorpix

The younger of two girls, she was born Franklin Birkinshaw in Alvechurch, Worcestershire, on Sept. 22, 1931. Her father, Frank, was a physician who had worked as a driver for British army officer T.E. Lawrence in the Middle East. Her mother, the former Margaret Jepson, was herself a novelist and the daughter of another author, Edgar Jepson, whose literary acquaintances included T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

Ms. Weldon’s parents had moved to New Zealand shortly before her birth, and she was raised there with her older sister, Jane, as their parents’ marriage collapsed. Her mother went on to raise the children alone, supporting the family by writing serialized romance and adventure novels. After World War II, they returned to Britain, where Ms. Weldon earned a scholarship to a London girls school and studied at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

After stints as a waitress and hospital orderly, she joined the British Foreign Office, where she wrote propaganda leaflets that were airdropped on Poland during the Cold War. In her early 20s, she had a son, Nick, from a relationship with Colyn Davies, a musician and nightclub doorman whom she left for a brief marriage to Ronald Bateman, a headmaster who was 25 years her senior and, according to Ms. Weldon, simply wanted a child and wife for his résumé.

She later wrote about the marriage in the third person, distancing herself from the relationship in her autobiography.

“What is so odd is that until you wrote about the experience, you didn’t really see it,” she <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/06/fiction.fayweldon" target=_blank>told the Guardian</a>, referring to herself in the second person. “The extraordinariness of it escaped you because it always does when you’re living through something. It’s only afterwards, when you look at little patches of your life, that you realize that it was absolutely insane.”

By the late 1950s, Ms. Weldon was working as a copywriter for an advertising firm, helping to create the egg-industry slogan “Go to work on an egg,” which endured for years, and suggesting the line “Vodka gets you drunker quicker” for a liquor campaign, which her bosses rejected.

Her experience writing concise, snappy ad copy came in handy when she launched her literary career in the early 1960s, shortly after marrying her second husband, Ron Weldon, a musician turned antiques dealer. She adapted one of her TV scripts into her debut novel, “The Fat Woman’s Joke” (1967), and later worked on screen projects including a BBC miniseries adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” (1980).

After three decades of marriage, Ms. Weldon’s husband left her for his “astrological therapist.” He died in 1994, the day his divorce to Ms. Weldon was finalized. Within a year, she married Nick Fox, a poet and bookseller who became her manager. They settled in a 19th-century stone house in Dorset, where Ms. Weldon continued to write, publishing books including “Chalcot Crescent” (2009), a dystopian novel about the future of capitalism, and “Death of a She Devil” (2017), the sequel to her earlier hit.

Sebastian Willnow

In 2020, she announced that she was getting a divorce.

Survivors include her son Nick; two sons from her second marriage, Dan and Sam; a stepdaughter, Karen; 12 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Another son from her second marriage, Tom, died in 2019.

Ms. Weldon was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2001 for services to literature, shortly after she gained notoriety in the literary world for her novel “The Bulgari Connection.” The book was sponsored by the jewelry company Bulgari, which paid for Ms. Weldon to reference its products. She had worried that the tie-in would sully her literary reputation, she <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/03/business/now-many-words-from-our-sponsor.html" target=_blank>told the Times</a>, but ultimately decided it wouldn’t make a difference: “They never give me the Booker Prize anyway.”

“My sentences are too short, and if you want to win prizes, and be taken seriously as a literary writer, you have to take out all the jokes,” she later told the Guardian. “I’ve judged enough prizes in my time to know the most boring book wins. And that’s not the book you want to write.”

Society of Professional Journalists D.C.'s Dateline Award for series, 2019

Society of Professional Obituary Writers' obituary writer of the year, 2019

University of Chicago, AB in English and philosophy

Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago.

Harrison Smith

washpost

the-washington-post

Britain Obit Fay Weldon

Search Death Notices

Place a Death Notice

Request a News Obituary

Obituaries

iptc-media/science_and_technology/social_sciences/psychology

iptc-media/society/values

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment/literature/poetry

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment/literature/fiction

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment/literature

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media

iptc-media/society

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/media

iptc-media/science_and_technology

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment

iptc-media/society/family/marriage

iptc-media/science_and_technology/social_sciences

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/media/book_industry

iptc-media/society/family/divorce

iptc-media/society/family

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Tito's KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Johnson & Johnson KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Bed Bath & Beyond KWs - INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: USAA KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ The Offer KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Arts & Entertainment_legacyaux_btb

advertising/B2_Asian Lifestyle Content_legacyaux_im0

advertising/B2_Books, Comics and other Literature_legacyaux_p1a

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Discover Card KWs – INCLUDES ANY

advertising/European Content

client-blocklists/Kyndryl KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - EXCLUDES ALL - 12.23.20

client-blocklists/Louis Vuitton KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Diageo - Johnnie Walker KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ Client List: Mercedes EQS KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/United Airlines KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FlexForm KW List - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Horror and Thriller Entertainment

client-blocklists/Client List: Apple Marcom KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021- INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/1st: Keywords+IPTC: Arts/Entertainment/Documentaries

client-blocklists/Client List: Organon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Verizon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Facebook KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: GOLDMAN SACHS SEC KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ Halo KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Hulu KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Mastercard KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Beto for Texas KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T KWs 2022 - INCLUDES ANY - NEW

client-blocklists/Synchrony Financial KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/LV Queen 2022 Neg KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/WaPo: Natural Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Hermes KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Content About Unbanked Households

client-blocklists/Client List: SAP 2022 KWs - INCLUDE ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Ukraine-Russia (Apple News) KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Showtime KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: ExxonMobil KWs - INCLUDES ANY Q4 2022

client-blocklists/Client List: Apple TV+ KW – INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Ronald McDonald House KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client Neg KW List: Omega KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ Halo KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/World National Local Content

client-blocklists/Safeway KW List Commanders Q4 2022 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/PMI KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Marcus Goldman Sachs Neg KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY Q4 2022

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs Q4 2022 - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/TV/Film

client-blocklists/UVA KW List Q4 2022 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Corporate Responsibility_legacyaux_FTM

client-blocklists/Client List: Citibank KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Amazon KWs 2022 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Citibank KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/SAP KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: PMI KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Qualcomm Custom KW - 5G

advertising/Citrix Mindfulness

advertising/B2_Family Matter 2.12.15_legacyaux_lf3

advertising/B2_Family & Parenting_legacyaux_v02

client-blocklists/Client List: Fidelity Investments KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Turbo Tax KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: GM Energy KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CME KW List 2022 - EXCLUDES ALL 

client-blocklists/Client List: EY KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Hermes (Alexandra) KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Marriott KW List Q4 2022 - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Grandparents

prism://prism.query/obits-stream&limit=20

The Washington Post Obituaries section has Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia obituaries, appreciations and death notices as well as historical obits and celebrity obituaries.

prism://prism.query/site,/world/europe&limit=20

Europe

The Washington Post provides the latest information and analysis on UK and European news. Includes news from the European Union, European commission news and European parliament news.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

World

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.

prism://prism.query/ap-articles-by-site-id,/world

prism://prism.query/site,/entertainment/books&limit=10

Books

Book reviews and news about new books, best sellers, authors, literature, biographies, memoirs, children's books, fiction, non-fiction and more. Search Washington, DC area books events, reviews and bookstores from the Washington Post.

prism://prism.query/site,/entertainment&limit=20

Arts & Entertainments

The latest news on entertainments and arts from The Washington Post. Breaking news and in-depth coverage of movies, music, tv, art, theater and video games.