Obituary: Adrienne Farrell Jackson

Jackson joined Reuters in 1945 after wartime service in the naval section at Bletchley Park, the secret British government establishment where the German Enigma code was broken. She was a correspondent in New Delhi from 1951 to 1960 and again from 1962 to 1970, Rome from 1960 to 1962 and Geneva from 1970 to 1975.

She married Peter Jackson, a Royal Navy officer who had joined in 1951 and became correspondent in Pakistan, after they covered the successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953.

In 1959, the couple had a world scoop with their coverage of the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet to India. They had met the Dalai Lama in November 1956 when he visited India for the celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the birth of the Buddha.

“At a reception we introduced our four-month-old daughter, Paddy, to him, and she gave him a chrysanthemum. He signed a photograph of the meeting for us,” Peter Jackson recalled.

While Jackson was chief correspondent in India, his wife worked as a correspondent, and the pair inducted a string of junior correspondents into the trade, including Peter Job, Nicholas Moore, Michael Neale, and John Rogers at the Reuters office in New Delhi.

Her main interest outside the office was establishing an association and school for the mentally handicapped in Delhi.

Her husband became interested in India's wildlife. He left Reuters in 1970 to work for conservation of the world's big cats, particularly the tiger.

PHOTO: The Dalai Lama received a chrysanthemum from Peter and Adrienne Jackson's first daughter, Paddy, when he visited New Delhi in 1956. ■