The famous author got a damehood in her hospital bed last week for her work in math education, which includes starting the Maths Anxiety Trust.
On Thursday, her son, the designer Jasper Conran, wrote on Instagram, “Shirl girl has flown away, a lark ascending.”
“Thank you to all the wonderful nurses and doctors, and to all the sweet, kind people who sent her so many lovely messages that meant so much to her.”
Dame Shirley was born in 1932 and first worked as a textile designer before becoming a journalist.
She started out as a design consultant for the Daily Mail and then moved on to become home editor. After that, she became women’s editor and started the Femail section.
At some point, Dame Shirley would work as a columnist for Vanity Fair magazine and as the women’s editor for the new Observer magazine.
But she is best known for her books. People called her the “Queen of the Bonkbuster” because of them.
In 1975, she wrote the best-selling non-fiction book Superwoman, which is seen as a practical guide for feminists.
Lace, her first book, came out in 1982 and was later made into a TV miniseries in the US with Bess Armstrong, Brooke Adams, and Arielle Dombasle.
When Dame Shirley was in her late 30s and told she had myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), she could no longer work full-time, she started writing books.
Savages, Crimson, and Tiger Eyes are some of her other books.
In addition to writing, Dame Shirley had a long history of fighting for working mothers’ rights at work. In 1998, she started Mothers In Management to improve working conditions and allow mothers to schedule their own hours.
She began the Work-Life Balance Trust in 2001 as a charity to push for flexible work hours for both men and women. In 2004 she was awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to equal opportunities.
Because she couldn’t find a good math book for her goddaughter, Dame Shirley started pushing for better educational materials in 2004. She did this after writing her own course.
In 2009, she started Maths Action, a group whose goal is to help British students do better in math. Five years later, she wrote Money Stuff, a math book that follows the GCSE curriculum.
Dame Shirley started the Maths Anxiety Trust in 2018 to “find solutions” and “raise public awareness and understanding of the condition known as maths anxiety.”
She said that the royalties from her books helped pay for her work as an education campaigner in the UK. For her efforts, she was made a dame in Liz Truss’s 2023 list of resignation honors.
He passed away in October 2020.
