Virginia Waite, who wrote for The Daily Telegraph and appeared on the BBC Holiday programme in the 1960s, has died aged 78.
Waite got her first taste of journalism at the Acton Gazette and then the Eastern Daily Press in Norwich. Afterwards, she wrote for women’s magazines and for the Daily Sketch, before joining the woman’s page of the Telegraph.
The Telegraph reports that Waite was almost certainly the only woman to have been provided with a black-maned lion as a travel visa.
Waite needed the Emperor’s permission to visit the ancient Coptic churches at Lalibela, so the lion was provided as a sign that this had been granted.
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