Journalist who chronicled the loss of her daughter, and her own illness, in a series of clear-sighted articles
Annabel Freyberg was a gifted writer and editor with a rare sense of style, who was arts editor of the London Evening Standard from 1999 until 2002 and, subsequently, interiors editor of the Telegraph magazine. She has died of cancer, aged 52, just 18 months after the death of her nine-year-old daughter, Blossom, from the same disease. She chronicled both the loss of her daughter and her own illness with remarkable honesty and insight.
In 2007, aged four, Blossom was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a particularly virulent childhood cancer. The shattering effect of this diagnosis, the succession of harrowing treatments, the period of remission, the cruel return of the disease, and Blossom's unfailing courage and even cheerfulness in the face of these trials, before her death in 2012, were recorded by Annabel in a series of articles in the Telegraph which are models of clear-sighted yet emotionally engaged writing.
Just days after Blossom's memorial service, at which Annabel delivered a moving eulogy, she herself was diagnosed with terminal mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung. Despite this blow, she continued to work and to engage with life – writing articles, attending parties, appearing in drawing-room theatricals, making cultural excursions, compiling her annual Teapot Calendar, and maintaining a voluminous correspondence, right up to the end.
In her last article, published posthumously – about reconciling herself to approaching death – she wrote of "endeavouring to carry on as normally as possible. I don't blame God for what is happening to me, and I feel only a mild curiosity about encountering him in a future life. I am more interested in the idea of seeing family and friends from this world again, in particular Blossom."
Annabel came of military stock. Her grandfather was General Bernard (subsequently Lord) Freyberg, VC, the celebrated commander of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force during the second world war. Her father, Paul, who became the second Baron Freyberg two years after Annabel's birth, was a colonel in the Grenadier Guards. Annabel was born in Windsor, where her grandfather was then acting as deputy constable of Windsor Castle; her father was away, serving abroad.
Annabel and her younger siblings (two sisters and a brother) grew up surrounded by beauty and books at Munstead House, near Godalming in Surrey. The house had been built for her great-grandfather, Colonel Sir Herbert Jekyll, and its garden was designed by his sister, Gertrude. Annabel's early interest in the arts was encouraged both by her mother, Ivry (nee Guild), and her paternal grandmother, Barbara, who was descended from William Graham, the great patron of the pre-Raphaelites. She also enjoyed the intellectual stimulation provided by her other grandmother, the agricultural scientist Perronnelle Guild.
A bright child, Annabel played chess for Surrey as a junior. She went to Heathfield school, Ascot, and then Marlborough college in Wiltshire (where I first came to know her). In 1980 she went – as one of the first cohort of women – to Christ Church, Oxford, with a scholarship to read English.
Her pre-Raphaelite beauty and individual sense of style – colourful bandanas, billowing skirts, second-hand paisley dressing-gowns, and plimsolls – made her a conspicuous figure; her rare social gifts made her a popular one. She loved bringing people together, and many lasting and significant friendships were forged at the crowded tea-parties she held in her college rooms. She appeared in numerous dramatic productions, playing Gertrude to Hugh Grant's Hamlet (with Imogen Stubbs as Ophelia) one year at the Edinburgh festival.
After university she studied at Kingston School of Art. But, despite her gifts as a painter, it was writing that increasingly claimed her attention. The eclectic range of her interests (from teapots and African music to beekeeping and Indian camel culture), her love of travel, her sociability, and her eye for detail, made her well suited to journalism.
She was taken on by World of Interiors magazine before joining the obituaries staff at the Independent, where she also wrote extensively about design and interiors. From there, Max Hastings poached her to become the arts editor of the Evening Standard. It was a job that fitted both her interests and her talents, and its termination in 2002, with the arrival of a new editorial regime, was a blow not just to her but to others. The Standard's exacting art critic Brian Sewell considered her the best arts editor he had worked with, a verdict endorsed by many other contributors.
In 2000 Annabel married the writer Andrew Barrow; and they had two children, Otto and Blossom. Andrew and Otto survive her.
• Annabel Pauline Jekyll Freyberg, writer and editor, born 16 August 1961; died 8 December 2013