Verity Donovan

Born in Yorkshire, Verity Donovan was the first woman reporter to work on the Brighouse Echo, a weekly paper in her home town, during the fifties. She again broke the male-dominated mould in provincial journalism when she became the first woman reporter on the bi-weekly Western Gazette, in Yeovil, Somerset, after moving to the Westcountry at the age of twenty-two. On her marriage, she moved to Devon and for several years was woman's page editor, and later general reporter and trainee subeditor on Exeter’s daily newspaper, the Express and Echo. She married for the second time in l974, to a well-known Westcountry businessman, John Hill, and after his death in 1996 she took over as managing director of his lighting business, a position which she held until the showrooms closed in 2013. She still lives in Devon, close to her three children and three grandchildren.