Barbara Hall

Barbara Hall MBE (3 February 1923 – 18 April 2022) was an English crossword compiler, advice columnist and writer. From the early 1980s until her retirement in 2010 she was the Crossword Puzzles Editor for the Sunday Times. In a career spanning seven decades, she edited, created and set puzzles for the Daily Mail, The Yorkshire Post, The Sunday Times and The Observer, as well as many other newspapers, making her Britain's longest serving crossword compiler. Early life Barbara Hall was born on 3 February 1923 in Derby, England, and grew up in Aston-on-Trent. Her father Lawrence Shelton Taylor served during World War I as a radio operator and air navigator before becoming an accountant on the railways. During World War II he re-joined the RAF as a reservist and trainer. Her mother Olive Taylor (née Bradbury) served in World War I on the Western Front in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, and worked during World War II as a Braille teacher. After gaining a scholarship to attend Parkfield Cedars Grammar School in Derby, Hall had her first crossword published, when she was 15 years old, in the Northern edition of the Daily Mail in 1938. This was as a result of winning a competition, for which she was paid 2 guineas. She intended to become an elocution teacher, having been accepted to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. However, her plans were disrupted by the Second World War. From 1943 until 1946, she served with the Women's Royal Naval Service, working as a coder, preparing orders for ships of the North Sea Coastal Command. After the war, and her marriage to the journalist Richard Seymour Hall, she developed her career as a crossword compiler and writer. Career The Hall family moved to Africa in 1955, where she worked part-time on the Central African Mail newspaper, a publication edited by her husband, which later become the Zambia Daily Mail. During her 12 years living in Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia when it became an independent country in 1964), she wrote numerous feature articles. Her advice column, "Tell me Josephine", was one of the paper's most popular features, and resulted in a book, including a foreword by Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the first President of Zambia, which was translated into over 19 languages. Barbara Hall continued to support her husband's work, writing articles and puzzles both before and after he became the editor of the Times of Zambia.