My friend Rhea Martin, who has died aged 84, was only four when her father, Leslie Mitchell, died suddenly of peritonitis, a week before his 34th birthday. He was the celebrated author of 17 works, including the groundbreaking trilogy A Scots Quair, published under the pseudonym Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
As an adult, Rhea's brilliant legal career, serving as one of the few female barristers soon after the second world war and acting as a magistrate for 30 years in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, demonstrated that she had inherited her father's formidable intellect as well as the mettle that her mother, Rebecca (nee Middleton), evinced in bringing up Rhea and her younger brother, Daryll, on her own in north London, during the war.
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