Wendy Henry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wendy Henry is a former British journalist and newspaper editor.
Henry was born in Lancashire, England, in 1951,[citation needed] and with her twin sister Sara left their mother's house in St Annes on Sea in the late 1960s to move to Manchester to live with their father, a Jewish market trader.[1][2] By the age of eighteen, she had become a mother during a short-lived marriage.[2][3]
In their youth, Henry and her sister were active in the International Socialists.[4][5] In 1972, she was given an absolute discharge after being accused of attempting to throw a carton of milk at Edward Heath when he visited Salford.[6] Her involvement in radical activism at the University of Manchester was spotted by Brian Whittle, Brian Taylor and Peter Reece, who took her on at the Manchester News Service.[7]
Career in journalism
In 1975, Henry was appointed to a six-month trial with the Daily Mail in Manchester, but was not given a permanent position. "I didn’t dress properly; they thought I was too scruffy," she told a Press Gazette interviewer in 2002.[8][9] During her early career as a freelance, she did manage to gain a scoop in 1976, an interview with Geraldine Ellis, the daughter of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, which she managed to sell to the News of the World.[3][10] For three years, she worked as an unattached freelance for the News of the World, then become features editor of Woman.[3] She joined The Sun in 1981 as the newspaper's books reader identifying those suitable for potential serialisation, then assistant editor (features), as the deputy of Roy Greenslade. Unlike most of her colleagues, Henry was inclined to stand up to editor Kelvin MacKenzie.[11] She was the first journalist to report that Princess Margaret was having a relationship with Roddy Llewellyn.[1]
According to Greenslade, during the Falklands War, when she heard that the General Belgrano had been sunk, she joked "Gotcha", which was used by editor Kelvin MacKenzie as a Sun headline.[12] She was suspended for a month in June 1985 on full-pay by MacKenzie, who was aware of Murdoch's displeasure, for her involvement in the fabrication of an interview with the seriously injured Falklands veteran Simon Weston. He had refused to be interviewed by The Sun and publicly complained, a story which was taken up by the rival Daily Mirror.[13][14]