Betty Brooke with Barclay, one of a number of dogs which featured in Saturday Special. Picture: TONY PIKE (00114567)

THE life of a woman who made an extraordinary contribution to Jersey life for over half a century is being celebrated by Islanders of all ages and backgrounds.

The inimitable Betty Brooke, a writer, Methodist lay preacher and former politician who was widely known and respected for her kindness, liberalism and spiritual insight – as well as her good humour and sense of fun – died last week at the age of 87 after the last of a series of illnesses which, until the end, did remarkably little to diminish her great zest for life.

Combining an undying pride in being a Scot with a deep love of the adopted Island home to which she moved in 1957, she enjoyed the gift of being able to transmit that joyful energy to the thousands whose lives she touched in both her private and her public lives. Everyone came away enriched in some way from time spent in her company.

As a freelance journalist, Betty Brooke enjoyed a 48-year association with this newspaper. She will be remembered for her Saturday Special column, published every week from 1962 until a few days before her death on 1 February, and she also served as the newspaper’s political sketch writer from 1967 to 1987, under the pseudonym of Hardbencher.

Paying tribute to that Eye on the States column and its author in the States last week, the Bailiff, Michael Birt, said that it, and she, set the gold standard for all those who have followed her as commentators on Jersey’s parliament.

Hoisted aloft by supporters after being successful in the 1987 Senatorial elections Picture: Glenn Rankine (00883889)

Eye on the States came to an end when Mrs Brooke moved from her hard bench in the press gallery to what she described as the softer seats below, following the death in office of Senator Jane Sandeman. The two women shared left-leaning political instincts, as well as practical social concerns and keen intellects, and Mrs Brooke said later that she had felt a distinct calling to offer herself as a successor in the resulting by-election.

During her relatively short stint as a States Member, which came to an end when she retired in December 1990, she served on the Postal, Defence, Public Works, Establishment, Fort Regent Development and House Committees. On Defence, she had responsibility for political liaison with the States Police, whose affection and respect she swiftly earned, as she had done in so many other areas of activity.

As a politician, Senator Brooke also reinforced an already well established reputation for speaking her mind without a shred of ambiguity, for genuine concern for the ‘little man’ in Island society, and for espousing liberal values which sometimes conflicted with those of her friends and political colleagues.

She had little room for the pomposity which sometimes goes hand in hand with political office. Indeed, she once confided to friends that one of the reasons that she decided to leave the States was her suspicion that she was beginning to take herself too seriously and enjoy the title and power a touch more than was spiritually healthy.

Betty Brooke was born Betty Cassie in Aberdeen in 1922. She might easily have come into the world in Malaya, where the family lived when her father was employed as chief engineer in ships plying the China Sea. However, the family’s return to the UK meant an upbringing in the Granite City, whose crisp accent Mrs Brooke was more than content to retain until the end of her days.

Ready to take her seat in the States Chamber. Picture: GARY GRIMSHAW (00883727)

In her autobiography, A Merry Going Round, written in 1997, she paints a picture of a largely happy childhood and records the fact that, for reasons she was never quite able to fathom, her beloved father, with whom she nevertheless clashed over matters of politics and religion, always chose to call her ‘Jim’.

He was a Conservative and Elder of the Church, and she was at that stage an avowed atheist and a socialist, which was why they never quite saw eye to eye.

Educated at Aberdeen Highschool for Girls, she might easily have gone on to Aberdeen University to study English, which was by then a passion, but the war intervened.

Initially, she did her bit for the war effort by spending a summer holiday working on a drill press in the engineering works that her father ran, though she found the work hard and tedious. She also managed to break the drilling machine, a precious piece of machinery sent to the UK under the American lend-lease scheme.

By that time the young Betty Cassie’s brother, George, had left university to join the Royal Artillery, and this prompted her decision to leave school and join the Women’s Royal Naval Service – the Wrens.

Having spent six weeks doing forestry work while she waited to be called up, and then learning to type at a ‘Wrennery’ in Dunfermline so that she could become a teleprinter operator, she was posted to Liverpool, which she was shocked to discover had been bombed heavily by the Germans.

She joined the staff of the Commander in Chief Western Approaches and spent two years helping to plot the courses – and endure the losses – of Britain’s lifeline, the Atlantic convoys. In her autobiography she records the agony of watching fellow Wrens decode signals that gave news of the sinking of their fathers’ or brothers’ vessels.

Ready to write another Saturday Special at her desk in The Granary in her Rozel home in November 1987 Picture: Ron Mayne (00883924)

Having been promoted to the rank of petty officer instructor, she was then transferred to London, where she began her career as a writer by helping to produce a broadsheet to bolster morale. This, she later said, surpassed Private Eye in terms of scurrilous content.

Mrs Brooke also experienced the capital’s bombardment by V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets. On one occasion a V1’s motor cut out overhead as she was drilling a party of Wrens on the parade ground. She knew that when the bomb’s motor stopped, it was on its way down towards a target, so she added an impromptu command to the parade ground lexicon: ‘Run like hell!’

When the Second World War ended, a full-time career in the Royal Navy beckoned and Betty Cassie was duly commissioned as a Wren officer.

Her duties, however, were not all-consuming. She found time to write for pleasure and as a freelance journalist, and she also enjoyed an active social life, confessing later that she was often to be seen at parties and receptions with a glass of gin in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Having already been engaged twice in the period immediately after the war, she became engaged a third time to a naval officer with a promising career ahead of him. Matters then took a surprising romantic turn.

The wedding date had been fixed and the naval chaplain at her shore base had been detailed to assist the minister at St Machan’s Cathedral in Aberdeen, where the ceremony was to take place. The padre in question was the Rev Herbert Brooke, a man 20 years her senior, but someone who made an exceedingly deep impression on her, especially when she heard him preach, although initially she was determined to let nothing shake her atheism.

In the event, the third engagement was also broken, and during a remarkable dinner meeting at which Mr Brooke confessed that he would have felt himself unable to marry his 25-year-old companion to another man, he proposed. The proposal was accepted and the couple were married on 21 July 1949, although a few ground rules were established first.

‘Herbert’ was regarded by neither party as a particularly suitable name, so ‘Berry’ was substituted, and it was also mutually agreed that the padre was set in most of his ways and bound by the duties of his office. As a result, Betty Cassie accepted that she would share the ‘Spartan life of self-denial’ that marrying a Methodist minister would entail.

The happy bride was also advised that the champagne chosen for the wedding reception should be a good vintage on the grounds that it would be the last alcohol that she would drink – a promise she kept for more than 60 years until her death.

In due course, membership of the Methodist Church led her to reappraise her spiritual beliefs, and she found what she referred to as ‘a curious peace of mind’ when belief finally displaced disbelief.

After postings in the UK, the couple were sent to Malta, an island stronghold of the Royal Navy which was not only a congenial place to live, but which also saw arrangements made for the adoption of a baby boy, Simon.

After returning from Malta in 1954, the family was based in Devonport and then, in 1957, they moved to Jersey, where Mr Brooke became minister at Aquila Road Church. Hidden under his cassock as they travelled to the Island by mailboat was Barney, the first of a succession of dogs to play an important part in Betty Brooke’s life.

From the outset, Mrs Brooke was an active minister’s wife, but she was eventually to take the lead role at Aquila. In 1966 Mr Brooke, who served as a Jurat as well as a deeply respected minister, collapsed in the pulpit, dying six weeks later.

For the next 11 months his wife ran the church and took his place as preacher. However, as she put it, without her husband’s stipend there would be bread and butter but very little jam, so it was shortly afterwards that she accepted the job as the JEP’s political commentator, having already been writing the weekly spiritual reflection, Saturday Special, for some four years under the not very obscure pseudonym of BB.

Aquila had been the catalyst for Mrs Brooke’s long association with the Jersey Evening Post because the family which owned the newspaper had been part of the congregation there since the time of its founder, Walter Guiton. She enjoyed a long friendship with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as a journalistic relationship unlikely ever to be equalled in length.

Betty in her service days

The lines between church and journalism were blurred not only in the weekly lines of Saturday Special, which always ended with a fitting quotation from scripture or other literature, but also in the social campaigning to improve the slum dwellings which still existed in St Helier in the early 1960s.

Two decades of casting an Eye on the States were followed by four years as the focus of political comment as a States Member, a period during which the then Senator Brooke pressed through legislation on gay rights – before the phrase was even in general use – victim support and criminal compensation.

After retiring from the States, she remained active on the Methodist circuit, particular in St Martin and the eastern parishes, and was always to be seen accompanied by one of a succession of dogs – latterly her two dachshunds, Polly and Pippin.

Barney, the dog which accompanied the Brookes to Jersey, used to share the pulpit with his master or mistress. Rory, who did not, was banned from church because on his first visit he snarled at everyone, including the organist – a person with scarce skills who was, however, not to be frightened off.

Two others, Tovey, ‘the dog with Queen Anne legs’, and Barclay, were written about extensively. The book featuring Barclay, A Sheltered Life, raised funds for the Jersey Animals Shelter, and other books, distinctively illustrated by her old friend and colleague Al Thomas, anthologised the Saturday Special column.

All were written in the book-lined study of the house above Rozel where so many visitors from all walks of life enjoyed her hospitality, humour and kindness.

Throughout her long life, Betty Brooke was motivated by a passion for justice and fair play. She was the enemy of pomposity, duplicity, hypocrisy and low standards, whose high-profile public work was merely one aspect of a compassionate concern for people and their problems. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, will testify to the often life-changing help they received from her as a friend, counsellor and confidante.

That she could offer such help without ever preaching or forcing religious views on others was a further testament to an extraordinary and greatly loved person.

Betty in her garden in 1992

As well as writing, Mrs Brooke worked at various times as a broadcast journalist for the BBC and Channel Television and, in the late 1970s, was elected by media colleagues to serve as chairman of the Jersey branch of the National Union of Journalists – a responsibility she carried out with her customary energy and efficiency.

She also founded the Jersey Meals on Wheels service with her friend Monica Becquet, though she still found time to enjoy golf, a passion for which she began to develop at the age of seven, and bridge, a pastime also learned during her youth in Scotland. For many years, she also ran a meditation group for women.

In her younger days she was an active sportswoman, playing squash, badminton and hockey, in spite of being a lifelong sufferer from asthma.

Travel was another great enthusiasm and she spent many holidays abroad with her great friend, Benita Kyle, a fellow Methodist minister’s widow whose friendship was one of the great joys of a life lived to the full.

Mrs Brooke is survived by her son, Simon, and a great many devoted friends, to whom the JEP extends its sympathy.

• A celebration of Betty Brooke’s life took place at the St Helier Methodist Centre at 12.45 on Wednesday.