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82 1GM Saturday December 8 2018 | the times Readers’ lives backdrop, Charlotte read Shakespeare to classes of up to 120 students, and encouraged their progress. One of the other Cambridge volunteer teachers was James Helm, who had also been at Trinity Hall, and their friendship soon developed into something more. Charlotte loved adventure and travel, from whitewater rafting in southern Africa, a student trip across Europe by Land Rover, and completing the Great Ethiopian Run in 2011, to trying the scariest rollercoaster in a Florida theme park and dragonboating on Dublin’s River Liffey. Her first publishing job was at Conran Octopus, in a Covent Garden loft, where she became a project editor. She went on to work with Remembering loved ones Food writer who loved to dance to Abba As a food writer and editor Charlotte Coleman-Smith loved to collect recipes and cookery books. When feeding her three hungry sons, perhaps after a football match, she enjoyed putting her work to practical use. She loved words and literature too, teaching Romeo and Juliet to packed classrooms of Zulu students in South African township schools as apartheid crumbled. Her writing reflected a sharp intellect which was worn lightly and, like her, was elegant and engaging. Charlotte was renowned for her beauty — inside and out, as many often remarked — and she made loyal and deep friendships wherever she lived or worked. From her early family life in Shropshire, to school and Cambridge University, travels and time abroad, and even during illness, Charlotte was loving, kind and encouraging in her relationships. She was modest and serene, and people were simply drawn to her. Her 50th birthday party was at the end of September, held jointly with Lucy Richardson, her dear friend from school. The theme was gold and, despite her pain, Charlotte danced the night away with her family and friends, and wore her trademark sunshine smile. The songs included Love is in the Air, sung by John Paul Young, the first dance at her wedding 18 years earlier, plus lots of her favourite Abba. It was a wonderful, golden occasion. Charlotte Coleman-Smith was born in Birmingham. Her blissful childhood was spent in rural Shropshire. Her sister Victoria was a year older, and Alice almost three years younger. Her mother, Susan, worked as a PA in the film industry, including for the director Michael Powell; her father, Michael, was a sales director in industry. The family lived in the villages of Beckbury and then Preston, before moving to Chetwynd Aston near Newport. Charlotte attended Castle House School in Newport with her sisters, run by the formidable Miss Pitchford, or “Pitchie”, before going on to Newport High School for Girls. When she was 14 the Coleman- Smiths moved to Atlanta, Georgia, for Michael’s work. Charlotte stayed with family friends in Wellington, Shropshire, before winning a scholarship for sixth form at Wycombe Abbey. After time as an au pair in New York, she went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1987, following in the footsteps of her father, to study modern languages. She chose French, which she loved, and German. Her year abroad was spent teaching in the Lycée Sophie Germain in Paris, and enjoying Parisian life with her college friends. After graduating, she taught English in townships near Durban, South Africa. Against a turbulent Charlotte Coleman-Smith, 50 leading chefs, editing Gordon Ramsay’s first book, and as assistant food editor at the Mail on Sunday’s YOU magazine. Through the late 1990s she lived with friends in Child Street in Earl’s Court, west London, in what became a social hub. She was conscientious and dedicated; one of her editors called her “irreplaceable”. In the UK and Ireland she wrote columns, blogs, guides and features, and edited award-winning books on subjects as diverse as cooking for children, global cuisine, travel and DIY. Among her favourite interviewees was the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Last year her food blog, What I Cooked Last Night, raised funds for the charity Breast Cancer Now. In 2000, in Ludlow, Shropshire, she married James, who was by now a BBC reporter. In 2001 their first son arrived, and the family soon moved to Ireland when James became the BBC’s Dublin correspondent. An initial one-year stint stretched to nearly a decade by the village green in the suburb of Sandymount, which she grew to love, as two more sons were born. Charlotte sang in the first local gospel choir, and interviewed celebrities and chefs for a range of Irish publications. Her rare gift for making strong and lasting friendships again showed itself. As one Irish friend said: “Whenever you saw Charlotte, you always went away feeling better about things afterwards.” She didn’t use the language of “fighting battles”, yet her depths of strength while ill were an inspiration for many. In 2010, during chemotherapy, she continued to sing a weekly solo in front of hundreds of worshippers at a Dublin church. Her consultant said she was the only patient he had ever met who began every consultation by asking: “How are you?” Charlotte loved motherhood, where her natural empathy and kindness shone through, and was a regular on the windswept touchlines of football pitches where she cheered on her three beloved boys. At home they benefited from her cooking skills; chicken risotto was a favourite, and her Victoria sponge birthday cakes. In 2011 the family moved back to the UK, and to Thames Ditton in Surrey where, typically, Charlotte settled into a new community and thrived. That community embraced her. At her funeral last month hundreds of friends and relatives from the UK, Ireland and far beyond celebrated Charlotte’s life and her love. They heard how, just a few weeks earlier, she had danced, dressed in gold and surrounded by loved ones, and smiling broadly. Charlotte Coleman-Smith was renowned for her sunshine smile She taught Romeo and Juliet to Zulu students in South African townships
