Myrtle Page, who worked as a reporter for a number of newspapers including the Dunmow Broadcast and Saffron Walden Reporter, has died aged 85.

Dunmow Broadcast: Myrtle Page. Picture: CONTRIBUTEDMyrtle Page. Picture: CONTRIBUTED (Image: Saffron Photo 2017 (COLLECT))

Myrtle, who had lived in Felsted since 1975, had suffered from lung and heart problems but died suddenly on holiday in Yorkshire on October 24.

A service to celebrate her life was held at the Three Counties Crematorium, Braintree on November 20.

Myrtle was born in Walthamstow on June, 12, 1932 and went to Walthamstow Girls High School. She trained as a secretary and became a public relations officer before becoming a journalist.

In the 1950s, she worked for the public relations company Pritchard Wood, the agency in London’s Charlotte Street who coined the phrases: “If you want to get ahead get a hat” and “Have a break, have a Kit Kat.” Myrtle, who had trained as a secretary and therefore had Pitman shorthand, was unusual in starting as a press officer and becoming a journalist. It is more usual for careers to go the other way round.

Myrtle met her husband Eric, an optician at Walthamstow Tennis Club. They married in 1959 and had two sons. The boys were born in Wales in the 1960s where Myrtle, having now become a journalist, worked as a sub-editor for the Abergavenny Chronicle.

After they moved to Essex, she became a reporter for titles including the Broadcast, the East Anglian Daily Times, the Essex Chronicle and the Braintree and Witham Times.

She was also invited to a Buckingham Palace Garden Party in appreciation of her work for the The Oyster, the journal of the Rural Communities Council of Essex, which works to promote fellowship and activities in rural communities including an annual village of the year competition for which she and Eric were judges, though not for their own village, of course.

In Felsted, Myrtle was a member of the bowls club and also a piano teacher. She was also a member of the Samaritans.

Her husband, Eric said: “She had a great sense of humour, there was always banter and repartee. She had a very good eye for detail and was always interested in everything that was going on.”

Myrtle leaves sons Stuart and Keith daughters-in-law Carol and Julia and grandsons Rowan, Jake and Ethan.