Jane Bonham Carter

A Girl’s Girl

I’d say I had three best girlfriends and Marie was one of them. We’ve known each other for years and years, she was a very special person. One of the things I keep saying to everyone, because of the way she died, is that you mustn’t think she was one of those dour foreign correspondents courting death.

She loved life, she absolutely loved it. She was such a wonderful combination of combat fatigues and elegance. She used to get very cross with me because I said when I first met her she was wearing camouflage, and she absolutely denied this. Her dress sense was incredible. I bet Marie was wearing the most wonderful underwear when she died.

Marie was a really good cook, despite her wonderful figure. You’d go round for dinner and the food wouldn’t be served til 10 o’clock but it was always absolutely delicious. I remember sailing with her off the coast of Turkey and we pulled in somewhere to spend the night. We agreed to have pasta that night but we needed basil.

Being Marie, she said “I’m going to find some basil,” and she set off into the hills. Richard, her boyfriend, and I settled down for a drink in a restaurant, and about half an hour later Marie appeared with two pots of unhealthy looking basil she’d discovered in some village. I said to her “this whole thing is completely ridiculous, because we are sitting at a table in a restaurant surrounded by hedges of basil.” We used to laugh and laugh about it.

Marie had gone off the way she would if she was pursuing a story. It was very Marie and very lovely. She was just an unbelievably fantastic person. The temperature rose when she walked into a room.

As her sister said to me today, she was “the friend of the friendless,” because Marie told the story of the people; she wasn’t someone who was particularly good at the big political oversight, she just wanted to get the words of the people, and that’s what she did wherever she went.

It’s a tragedy and she should have lived to an old age and told her stories for generations and generations.