Deborah Jane Orr (23 September 1962 - 19 October 2019) was a Scottish journalist who worked for The Guardian, The Independent and other publications. After Thatcherism, his world would be blown down in broad daylight, and he becomes an almost Hardyesque casualty of the land, someone carrying his trauma and his prejudices as if they were all he had. I just had to tough it out. Deborah Jane Orr (23 September 1962 - 19 October 2019) [1] [better source needed] was a British journalist who worked for The Guardian, The Independent and other publications. Ah kent his faither, or mither, is the most withering of Scots contempt. Win gave the anguished cry of narcissists the world over: But what about me?. [2], Last edited on 16 December 2022, at 22:36, "Award-winning columnist Deborah Orr dies aged 57", "A week ago, my mother died. But I couldnt face telling my parents that St Andrews wasnt right for me, couldnt bear to tell anyone else the bizarre to all of them, I felt sure fact that my parents hated me being at university. "[12] This statement, viewed by many as antisemitic, was the subject of criticism. Win worried about what people thought, Deborah didnt. I didnt know what anything was. For a time the couple were glamorous fringe bohemians of the Groucho Club set and put on lavish parties. heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment. FBI hunt 'armed and dangerous' shooting suspect. (There can be few better accounts of how the postwar working-class strove so complicatedly for betterness.) Deborah Ann Orr, 53, of Gulfport, passed away Sept. 13, 2011. He seemed delightful, chatty and friendly. Tim was astounded, and not a little put off. I didnt know that was even legal. She moved to Weekend magazine and in 1993 succeeded Roger Alton as editor. She said instead that she wanted me to push her down to Airdrie town centre in the very rudimentary wheelchair to look around the shops. One time, when Id let it drift for an entire week, and when Win finally called me, her voice dripping with angry contempt at my neglect and disrespect, I shat on a newspaper on my bedroom floor rather than tell her that shed woken me up at shameful Sunday noon. Every time my parents made a seismic intervention in a relationship, I ended up pregnant. By then it was, all of a sudden, far too late. 2. She was happy to be with her daughter, there in New Lanark. I could have had some of the chapter round as witnesses, got my red wings.. The old town, never a place of beauty, fell victim to the virus of planning which infected all Labour councils in the west of Scotland in the post-war era, and now has a soulless shopping centre at what was the heart of the town and where people once lived and congregated. Claiming that her girlhood was like growing up in a religious cult without the religion, the chief tenet of the faith was the inferiority of women. The ennobled Dalziel family moved to Surrey in the 1950s, but the name is still present locally in the title of the High School and the local co-operative. This site is part of Newsquest's audited local newspaper network. The comments below have not been moderated. Even now, my strong, working-class, regional accent will be referred to pointedly and Ill feel obliged to respond with a rousing round of Muuuurrrduuur, in the manner of Detective Taggart. The crowd was sparse, she writes. I wouldnt be able to keep up. Win was so glad to be outside again, so glad to see the sky and the water and the tea room. The former Guardian and Independent writer's death was confirmed over the weekend by her family. Motherwell was a heart of darkness, even before the economy shrank in the Eighties. But there are miracles too in the world of hard knocks, and Orr, by a kind of genius, finds the kernel of the towns former existence, and locates the mother in its name. He was a part of the social fabric of the town in a way that I never was. As we lay on the bed and I silently sobbed, he said: Dont I get a cuddle? Petrified and revolted, I let him put his arms round me. Oh, God. He was sacked after admitting taking heroin in the toilet of John Majors plane during the 1997 general election campaign, her plea that he be allowed to resign notwithstanding. Motherwell and mother were always calling her back, but not longingly, and her unforgiving description of her relationship with both her parents makes for an uneasy read. Deborah Orr who died last October of cancer aged 57, left behind a memoir . There was once a sign on the estate which said Trespassers will be Prosecuted. It took six seconds for that huge, blue gasometer and those massive elegant cooling towers to come down After the site was decommissioned, its buildings flattened and shovelled away, its earth decontaminated, there was just a big hole, in the town, in the shire, in so many peoples lives. The local council let off some balloons, to represent every person whod ever worked there, and the Orr family went home, like many others, to live out their myth of survival. The author idolised her father, John, an intelligent and handsome man, and she would have had a fabulous father/daughter thing if it wasnt for my mum, who came between us. Orrs book, although full of vivid observations, often teeters towards out-and-out rant but her litany of woe is leavened by some caustic one-liners. No! Safely here! Within a couple of years of arrival in London I was the proud chatelaine of half a one-bed flat in Brixton. There he got into a dispute with one Sir Piers Courtenay, which ended up with a challenge being issued and accepted. She had just moved to a new home in Brighton when cancer, first diagnosed a decade ago, returned with a vengeance two months ago and only a few days ago was found to have septicaemia. I once saw some letters sent to David Gibson, Glasgows messianic early 1960s housing convenor he took seven sugars in his tea, his wife said which came from citizens desperate to escape the slums. You all right? People with mental and physical illnesses or disabilities are dying for want of care, or even heat. The teaching profession is struggling once more with a re-jigged exam system, and is bracing itself for a further squeeze on budgets. "Really shocked and upset to hear about the death of Deborah Orr," wrote Guardian columnist Owen Jones. Her mother Win (Winifred, ne Avis) was an Essex girl her father had met and married during a spell as a postman in southern England. I got my new life! An October 7 tweet, however, said: Very ill with septicaemia. Orr left a dull, ordinary, working-class life to become a star columnist, journalist and editor; one of Londons metropolitan elite. Deborah Orr, award-winning journalist. I was living in Edinburgh and, like most people from mining families, I was going on the demos, helping with the collections, attending the fundraisers. Orr writes of this as if her life depended on it. Outside the cities, just by Nirvana, they were building perfect schemes for those who knew how to live. Brexit was like deciding you are going to cure cancer by giving up membership of your golf club, she opined. Here was another one. ON the road out of Hamilton there used to be signs which indicated Motherwell and Beyond. None of them even knew how to do a pan of chips, let alone put out a chip-pan fire, which as far as I was concerned were the basic survival skills. Youve been telling me how much you hate it all my life., Pursed lips. When she was 11, her tenement building was demolished and she, her brother David and their parents were shipped to a new housing estate. This obsession of mine, Win explained, had destroyed her ideas about what her life would be like. Men not given to poetry would show signs of emotion when in after years they remembered the sky being lit up when in the evening the furnace doors in Colvilles were opened, and a brightness seemed to prance from cloud to cloud. Born in Syracuse, she was a West Genesee High. Their priorities were frivolous, their entitlement baffling, their conception of how the world worked hopelessly unrealistic. Her smartness, vivid personality, serious edge, willingness to tell it as it is and bravery shone out to the end. Deborah Jane Orr (23 September 1962 19 October 2019)[1][bettersourceneeded] was a British journalist who worked for The Guardian, The Independent and other publications. Expand the Memories and Condolences form. At some point well into adulthood she went into psychotherapy, and was introduced to the concept of narcissism, which becomes the dominant touchstone in her analysis of everything and everyone, particularly of her parents, Win and John. Attached CV. Her working class Motherwell background came in handy in 2001 when a hooded intruder, who turned out to be a woman, broke into her terraced house in Stockwell, south London. There had been a corridor party in the hall of residence. Wins existence, for example, was ordered by the choices of the menfolk. MOTHERWELL: A GIRLHOOD by Deborah Orr (Weidenfeld 16.99, 304 pp). I may even have erected a wall of pillows down its middle. Maybe what is really amazing is the vastness of . With long hair, a taste for thigh-high brown boots, leather miniskirts, Goth-style apparel or long swishy skirts, she had a Dorothy Parker manner, sardonically witty and somewhat haughty. W hen Deborah Orr died, in October, I hadn't seen her for more than 16 years. At times, she comes close to Gorkis description of his own lower depths. The latter wanted her to stay in the domestic orbit, to get a man and be a housewife. End of twitter post 4 by frances Barber#FBPE, On board the worlds last surviving turntable ferry. This is an edited extract from Motherwell by Deborah Orr (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 16.99, and also available as an audiobook). This feeling of powerlessness under my parents unflinching belief that Id let them down. He got on with everyone. [1] She was also a columnist for The Independent. She is survived by her sons, Ivan and Luther. It had been explained to me, early on, that St Andrews was full of posh English people because privately educated kids who didnt get into Oxbridge viewed St Andrews as the next best thing. We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse. I had met Crispin in my first year. 22:02 BST 25 Jan 2020 Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours. On October 1, she tweeted: I live in Brighton now! Win could rule the staff at Downton Abbey but she was trapped, by being a woman in that era. Fans appreciated her muscular style and voice. Read about our approach to external linking. The Dalzell estate, dominated by a grand, Scottish-baronial mansion now divided into flats, is now more accessible now than it used to be. The comments below have not been moderated. I never stopped hoping that, with Dad gone, with her loyalties less divided, Win might have conceded that Id grown up in a different time to my parents, that being a career girl and having sex before marriage, were not such terrible things. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience the local community. She is survived by her two sons, Ivan and Luther, from her marriage with fellow writer Will Self, as well as her stepchildren, Alexis and Madeleine. The proudest feature of her fathers life, according to him, was that he had never missed a days work in his life, a boast that persisted even after they made him redundant. Thus the most terrible inquisition of my life began. We had lunch in the pub, and Win ate with exquisite relish. She had an intensity that less assured people and even editors found intimidating: some were fearful of taking her calls. 1. The story of family and town are intertwined not just in the chapters on her childhood years, as would be common in an autobiography, but for her whole life, even after she had moved to London. How much she remembers! The first female editor of the Guardian'sWeekend magazine by the age of 30, Orr is also a playwright and the co-creator of "Enquirer", commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland, performed. Unless you are experienced as an estate executor, you probably should hire an attorney. His son became provost and MP and there is a grand family plot in the graveyard known, curiously, as the Globe. We are lucky at The Herald. You could almost weep at the hopeful, inquisitive young girl she was, and the forces of repression and shame she ran up against. My protests brought nothing but greater anger. I got a job as a typesetter, then a job with a trade magazine for sales directors. I dont want to stay in Motherwell. This was the name for the very posh English aristocrats who dominated the university and set the tone. As a woman it had become so rare for the three of us to sit together and talk about me. Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who arent really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse. Maybe it did. Instead, Id go up a lot. [7] In February 2018, she joined the i newspaper as a regular columnist. On the day they blew Ravenscraig down, Deborah was there with her father, mother and brother David. You mean spaghetti hoops? Free UK p&p on all online orders over 15. [2] From 1993 to 1998, Orr was editor of the Guardian Weekend magazine. It recounts Orr's upbringing in Motherwell, a flinty Scottish town - "I couldn't stand the place, even when it was still in its pomp. In the past, the journalists job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. But the rest, the education bit? But if this seems Dickensian, or out of a Thomas Hardy novel, Orr is unabashed. Journalist and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup noted how Orr had been making plans for a future she knew she probably wouldn't see. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. That night my mother rounded things off by adding, as some kind of double-edged sweetener, I love you, Deborah. It shouldnt really matter, but it does, very deeply, in the Orr scheme of things. Childhood is a time when wounds can be inflicted that cut into the psyche and continue to wreak havoc in adult of life, and so it would appear to have been for Orr, who evidently acquired a dual identity, one public and the other concealed deep inside herself. They routinely opened letters that were sent to me. Id nodded, even though I didnt know what Oxbridge was. A modern. Data returned from the Piano 'meterActive/meterExpired' callback event. Explore in 3D: The dazzling crown that makes a king. Which was a bit weird, since I was almost 19. The journalist Deborah Orr, who has died aged 57 after suffering from cancer, was a strikingly original character, and made an impression in whatever she did. Her father John. Lectures, like everything else at this ancient university, seemed needlessly medieval. All rights reserved. No flatmates. A distinguished journalist, Orr was born and bred in Motherwell and saw the place change during her lifetime. To plant trees in memory, please visit the. Id already finished university by the time the miners strike began in 1984. Not at all.. I feared her. [4] She was raised in Motherwell, Scotland. I opted for natural-looking makeup. There are several authoritative portraits of father-son relationships, such as that by Thomas Carlyle, the Red Clydesider David Kirkwood and even by RL Stevenson, but Orr breaks new ground, and does so with heart-breaking truthfulness, some subtlety of insight but also some brutality of memory. My pride wouldnt let me admit to Win and John that theyd been right and Id been wrong. Yet the books greatness lies mainly in the psychological dimension, in the vivid portrait of her parents narcissism and the just-as-vivid portrait of her own, which to some heartbreaking degree was to prove the struggle of their lives. But Deborah was always honest: so I will be too. Deborah Orr, right, hosted An Evening With Vivienne Westwood in 2016. . You must stop seeing this man right away. I wish Id known. The people of Motherwell were used to being part of something much bigger than themselves, her daughter writes. Few natives knew, and fewer outsiders cared, that the town has a history that stretches back into the Middle Ages. What makes China tick? He does not respect you, or he would not have done this to you. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, Orr wrote candidly about being treated for the disease. In that world, men were never allowed to show emotion, losing your nerve, getting the fears. [22], She died of breast cancer in October 2019, aged 57. When the already tottering campanile in Venice collapsed at night-time on to St Marks Square in 1902, damaging no property and injuring no person, people said that the bell tower had shown itself to be a gentleman. The barriers between private and public life were in her case porous, and while the focus of her attention is her own family, the wider life of society is always in sight.
