The former deputy editor of the Guardian had an intolerance of inertia and had a conviction that was singular and endearing
George was a hurricane of energy and enthusiasm and – quite often – fury that whipped through the lives of all of us lucky enough to know her, leaving us permanently scrambling to keep up.
She lived life more intensely than anyone I have ever met. At any moment she could explode into a passionate denunciation of the most apparently innocuous detail in the design of a web page, or a new film, or of Michael Gove's latest curriculum announcement.
Curiously, for a child of the 60s, she never tried drugs of any sort. We used to joke that she never needed to; if only the rest of us could have a bit of whatever she was on.
In an age of political ennui, George's conviction – about so many things – was singular and endearing. I argued more with her than anyone I know but arguments with George were like summer squalls – thunderous for a few short minutes and forgotten moments later.
Although George had firmly held views on just about everything, she occasionally allowed facts to change them. After leaving school she traveled to Israel to work on a kibbutz. She arrived a committed Zionist – and left a few months later a fierce critic of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
George cared passionately about the Guardian – and about journalism. Even at some of the lowest points of her illness, visits had the quality of a stiff viva: Why had an interviewer not asked a minister a particular question? Why had no one run the one piece she wanted to read about benefit cuts? She was a ferocious detector of journalistic laziness and she was almost always right.
In an office environment where most difficult communication was coded or elliptical, she was always refreshingly plain-spoken. You could comfortably bet that any slightly waffly meeting would be punctuated by her rolling her eyes skyward and declaring: "Oh, for fuck's sake!"
Her tolerance for the kind of inertia inherent in any big organisation was similarly low. One of her catchprases in recent years became "I am going to make this happen TA-DAY!".
With the exception of Ronan, Finn and Molly, George loved nothing more than skiing, and nothing revealed more about her than the way she skied. She seemed to devour the mountain, flying down the slopes with a combination of strength, style and raw, childish delight. I spent 20 years pretending that I was not struggling to keep up with her, desperately trying to control my breathing at the rare rest-stops she allowed.
Last February, a few months after major surgery that included removal of one eye, we skied together one last time. We went to Champoluc, the little Italian resort she adored, and where she was treated as virtual royalty. For a few extraordinary days, George flew down the mountains again and the unimaginably bleak months of illness seemed part of another life.
That's how I'll remember her: cutting a trail of crisp "S" shapes down an off-piste run, shimmering with delight, uncatchable, unstoppable.