Jehane Markham obituary

My sister Jehane Markham, who has died aged 75, was a playwright who wrote for radio, television and theatre. She also had her poetry published in five of her own collections.

Jehane’s original BBC Radio 4 plays included More Cherry Cake (1978) and Thanksgiving (1985) – both of which appeared in the Afternoon Play slot – and she also adapted Slyvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1976 and Antonia White’s Frost in May (1979) for the BBC. On television she wrote a BBC Play for Today, Nina, in 1978, and in theatre her play The Birth of Pleasure was performed by the Wonderful Beasts theatre company in London, in 1997, and Hermes was staged by the Rosemary Branch theatre, also in London, in 2006.

Jehane was born near the village of Forest Row in East Sussex to Olive Dehn, a poet and children’s author, and David Markham, an actor. She grew up on the edge of the Ashdown Forest and was home-schooled until she was eight. After a move to London her later education was at Camden school for girls and then, in 1968, to the Central School of Art in London, although she left there before the end of her course to pursue writing.

Aside from her work in TV, radio and theatre, with the Jehane Markham trio she set her poems to jazz, speaking to the beat of the music and performing in various London venues from 2004 to 2021 and releasing two CDs in 2010. She was also the librettist for On the Rim of the World, an opera composed by Orlando Gough and performed at the Royal Opera House in 2008.

Her first collection of poems appeared in book form as The Captain’s Death in 1974, with four subsequent volumes in 1993, 1999, 2004 and 2022. Many of her poems focused on the natural world and family.

Jehane was married to the actor Roger Lloyd-Pack in 2000, and together they involved themselves in their north London community of Kentish Town, opposing local cuts in public services.

Roger died in 2014. She is survived by their sons, Sevan, Hartley and Louis, five grandchildren and two siblings, Kika and me.