Sylvia Anne Schofield (née Terry-Smith; 28 May 1916 – 2 March 2006) was a British writer and traveller. She had a long and varied career, and her ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'' obituary described her as, "an agony aunt, wartime intelligence operative, honorary colonel in the US Military Police, advertising copywriter, mystery novelist, photographer, archaeologist, and intrepid traveller."

Early life

She was born Sylvia Anne Terry Smith on 28 May 1916, at 113 Ramsden Road,

Balham Balham () is an List of areas of London, area in south-west London, England, in the London Borough of Wandsworth, with small parts extending into the neighbouring London Borough of Lambeth. It has been settled since Saxon times and appears in t ...

, London, the elder daughter of William Horace Smith, an architect and chartered surveyor, and his wife, Annie Smith, née Terry, a Salvation Army officer. She was educated at Wimbledon Technical College until the age of 16.

Career

Aged 16, she started work as a freelance journalist, in a women's magazine as its teenage

agony aunt An advice column is a column in a question and answer format. Typically, a (usually anonymous) reader writes to the media outlet with a problem in the form of a question, and the media outlet provides an answer or response. The responses are wr ...

, and as an interviewer for newspaper arts pages. At the start of the Second World War, she joined the BBC's monitoring service, where she met her future husband, Angus Matheson. Even though they divorced in 1950, she was to publish all her non-fiction books as Sylvia A. Matheson. She wrote four Crime Club novels using her dog's name, Max and cat's name Mundy (Max Mundy), as her pseudonym, all adventure thrillers with a news photographer named Russell Jones as the chief protagonist: ''Death is a Tiger'' (1960) set in Baluchistan, ''Dig for a Corpse'' (1962) set in the mountains of central Asia, ''Pagan Pagoda'' (1965) in Burma, and ''Death Cries Olé'' (1966) in Spain. She was a fellow of the

Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...

. ''

'' in her obituary, described her as, "an agony aunt, wartime intelligence operative, honorary colonel in the US Military Police, advertising copywriter, mystery novelist, photographer, archaeologist and intrepid traveller."

Personal life

On 19 December 1941, she married Angus Matheson (1912–1962), son of Malcolm Matheson, a church minister in the Outer Hebrides, at Kingston and Surbiton Presbyterian Church. They divorced in 1950. Matheson would later become professor of Celtic languages and literatures at the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

. In 1956, she married Henry Beaumont Schofield (1916–1990), a petroleum engineer she met while reporting on the discovery of the Sui gas field in Pakistan's Bugti tribal area.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schofield, Sylvia Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society 1916 births 2006 deaths British women novelists People from Balham British women journalists BBC people British women archaeologists 20th-century British archaeologists