Cassandra Jardine - Telegraph That was Godolphin and Latymer, in west London, from where she went up to Newnham College, Cambridge. Her original intention had been to read History, but she changed her mind on the drive up to Cambridge for her first term, deciding instead to study English. At Cambridge she was among the most popular undergraduates of her generation, and became a familiar sight as she rode around the city on a tricycle - not out of affectation, but because she had never mastered the art of riding a two-wheeler. Her first job on leaving university was as an assistant to TE Utley, the Daily Telegraph leader writer and columnist who had been blind since birth and required the help of a succession of young women who acted as his "eyes." Cassandra Jardine then went as a feature writer to Cosmopolitan magazine, before moving in the early 1980s to work for the house journal at Unilever. In this role she travelled extensively, reporting on their products and their factories across the world. This led to an offer to become deputy editor of Business magazine, and in 1989 she joined The Daily Telegraph, where she would remain for the rest of her life. Throughout her career she was notable for her willingness to volunteer for any assignment and for her skills as an interviewer. Neither was she afraid to confront painful personal issues. The death of the government scientist Dr David Kelly in 2003 (judged to have committed suicide following the accusation that he had leaked information about the dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) led to an impassioned article about her own father, Christopher Jardine, who was made a "scapegoat" after the collapse in 1971 of the insurance firm Vehicle and General, leaving a million people without cover. Civil servants, Cassandra Jardine wrote, are "cautious, retiring, ungrasping and dedicated" people who "do not expect to be named and shamed when something that they have administered, but not engineered, goes wrong." At an inquiry, her father "was given no chance to defend himself, nor separate legal representation. He had been told the department would 'look after him" and he had trusted them." Although he was later vindicated, she wrote, he "was never the same; his confidence in the political system he had supported for so long was gone ... He died - too young, the family thought - his will to live sapped. In July 2010 Cassandra Jardine was diagnosed with lung cancer, an event to which she responded with exemplary dignity and courage. Not only did she continue to work whenever possible (over the last year she had interviewed the broadcasters Clare Balding, Jan Leeming and Mariella Frostrup, the actress Harriet Walter and the writer Margaret Drabble), she also wrote a series of articles about her illness to help raise public awareness. In 2011 she won the Lung Cancer Journalism Award and the Excellence in Oncology Award for this work. Only a fortnight ago she wrote in the Telegraph about how she had disregarded an early symptom, a persistent dry cough: "Aged 55, I was too young and fit for lung cancer to cross my mind. Why would it strike a woman who had never smoked more than three cigarettes a day and had given up some years before? The least self-pitying of people, Cassandra Jardine could be impatient of self-indulgence, but she was always supportive of anyone in genuine distress. She was deeply involved in the annual Telegraph Christmas charity appeal, making many friends among the charities involved. She enjoyed playing bridge, but above all she was enthusiastically social. A generous hostess at her home in Camberwell, south London, she was a superb cook who could produce meals at lightning speed, thinking nothing of knocking up a delicious concoction for 20 people at short notice. She also wrote a column for the Telegraph about parenting, and was the author of two books: How to be a Better Parent: No Matter How Badly Your Children Behave or How Busy You Are (2003); and Positive Not Pushy: How to make the most of your child's potential (2005). Cassandra Jardine is survived by her husband, the actor William Chubb, and their two sons and three daughters. Cassandra Jardine, born November 16 1954, died May 29 2012