Charlotte Bingham was l9 when she wrote her first autobiography, Coronet Among the Weeds, a humourous account of the life of a teenage daughter of a lord. Her parents worked for MI5, and the author John le Carré based his fictional spy George Smiley on her father, John Bingham. She has written for such television series as No Honestly, Upstairs Downstairs and has enjoyed success as a romantic writer, selling three million copies of her novels. This year she will publish two titles: The Magic Hour and Friday’s Girl. The Hon Charlotte Bingham is 63 today.
RGT
Sir Rex Hunt, Governor of the Falkland Islands, 1980-82, 79; Lord Hutton, a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, 74; Baroness Prashar, First Civil Service Commissioner, 57; Geoffrey Woolley, former Letters Editor of The Times, 90.