KING, Stella (Lennox) 1919-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born January 6, 1919, in Birmingham, England; died following a stroke October 29, 2002, in Watford, England. Journalist and author. King is best remembered as a writer for the diary page of the London Evening Standard and as a biographer. Educated at the Southern College of Art in Bournemouth, England, she was about to start a job as fashion correspondent for the Bournemouth Times when World War II began. She joined the Army Transport Services, where she became a captain defending her country from German bombs, and after the war married an air force officer, whom she would divorce in 1953. After her divorce she was hired by the Evening Standard to write for the diary page. In this position, King was noted for the contacts she built with politicians, royalty, and other journalists. She later moved to other papers, including the Daily Express and Sunday Express. While at the former, she wrote her first book with her second husband, the biography Once upon a Time (1960), which is about Antony Armstrong-Jones. Quitting her regular job, King became a freelancer for newspapers such as the New York Times, and she wrote two more biographies, Princess Marina: Her Life and Times (1969) and Jacqueline, Pioneer Heroine of the Resistance (1989), which is about French Resistance agent Yvonne Rudellat. In her later years King continued to quench her thirst for knowledge by studying law, learning how to fly an airplane, and becoming an expert fly-fisher.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

periodicals

Times (London, England), November 19, 2002, p. 34.