Marjorie Wallace (SANE)

Marjorie Shiona Wallace MBE, (Countess Skarbek), born 1944 in Nairobi, Kenya, Wallace is an award winning writer, broadcaster and investigative journalist and is the chief executive of SANE,a mental health charity in the UK established in 1986. SANE was founded by Wallace after an overwhelming public response to a series of articles written by her in 'The Times' entitled The Forgotten Illness. The articles underscored the neglect of people suffering from schizophrenia and the paucity of services and treatments. From its initial focus on schizophrenia, SANE developed and is now concerned with all mental illnesses. Wallace has a degree in Psychology and Philosophy from University College, London. On leaving university she worked as a trainee producer for The Frost Programme with David Frost (1966-68), and went on to become a religious programmes producer, and a current affairs reporter for London Weekend Television (1969-72). However, she made her mark as an investigative journalist for The Sunday Times (1972-89), for whom, as the paper's Social Services Correspondent, she wrote a series of articles in 1972 highlighting the financial and emotional plight of the Thalidomide children who had been born in the 1950s and 1960s with physical disabilities. As a result of this campaign she met Terry Wiles, about whom she collaborated on a biography, On Giant's Shoulders (1976). This was to be made into a BBC 'Play for Today' in 1977 in which Wallace was portrayed.

As a journalist for The Times she was awarded Campaigning Journalist of the Year for 1988. Wallace has also been Medical Journalist of the Year and she received a British Neuroscience Association award in 2002.

As a result of her articles entitled The Forgotten Illness and her subsequent work in the field of mental illness she was elecetd an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2001. . Wallace was awarded an MBE in 1994, and an honorary Doctorate of Science by City University, London in 2001. Since 1990 she has been a Fellow of University College, London.

Wallace married the psychoanalyst Count Andrzej Skarbek, with whom she had three children. She lives with the science writer and broadcaster Tom Margerison and their daughter in Highgate, north London

Publications include

 * The Silent Twins Marjorie Wallace (1986) ISBN 0-345-34802-8
 * On Giant's Shoulders : the story of Terry Wiles by Marjorie Wallace and Michael Robson Times Books, London (1976) ISBN 0723001464