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Rachel and Margaret Ryan
Rachel and Margaret Ryan
Rachel Ryan, neé Montague (1901-78), was brought up in Manchester and went to Somerville College, Oxford to read PPE in 1920. She married Alfred P. Ryan, a Times journalist, in 1926. In 1937 she wrote A Biography of Manchester. Like Margaret Ryan she was a lifelong, active member of the WI. Margaret Ryan, née Thompson (1904-91), who was married to Alfred Ryan's brother, attended Kensington Secretarial College and at the age of 21 was head-hunted by Canada’s Western University to set up a new faculty of Secretarial Science; in 1933 she published Office Training for Girls. During and after the War both Rachel and Margaret contributed to Woman’s Hour and wrote articles for The Times. Their first collaboration, Dinners for Beginners, appeared in 1934. This was followed in 1950 by Quick Dinners for Beginners. Their third and last joint publication was Shopping for Food (1958).
