Mary Henderson

Mary Xenia Henderson, Lady Henderson (née Cawadias; 29 March 1919 – 22 January 2004) was a Greek-born British journalist and host. She worked as a nurse during the Second World War and went on to be a journalist for both the magazines Life and Time covering the Greek Civil War and was the sole female correspondent reporting on the conflict. Henderson was a host at various embassies around the world and published her memoirs in 1988. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1988. Early life On 29 March 1919, Henderson was born Maria Xenia Cawadias in Athens, Greece. She was the daughter of Alexander Polycleitos Cawadias, the physician to George II of Greece, the King of Greece, and head of Greece's largest teaching hospital called the Evangelimos. Henderson had one brother. An ancestor of Henderson's was an archbishop who fought against the Turkish in the Greek War of Independence and her grandfather, Panagiotis Kavvadias, established a museum on the Acropolis. Following the monarch's abdication in 1924 and move to exile in London, she and her family moved to Wimpole Street in Central London. Henderson was raised to be pro-British and educated to believe English people, particularly Lord Byron, were "blond gods, who could do no wrong." She was educated at Queen's College in Harley Street, and subsequently passed the entry examination to study medicine at the University of Oxford but her father barred her from attending the university since he did not want his daughter to be "blue-stocking". Career