The prolific novelist, playwright, essayist and short-story writer Rosemary Friedman, who has died aged 97, began her career while a medical wife in her husband Dennis Friedman’s GP practice, which provided in-depth material for her early novels.
Against this intensive background, the Friedmans brought up their four daughters, while also fighting off an ongoing cavalcade of childhood illnesses. With the fortunate co-operation of two sets of grandparents willing to care for the babies for two weeks at Christmas-time, the couple also travelled the world from Krakov to Katmandu, generating for her invaluable life experience as a writer.
Rosemary Friedman went on to publish 26 titles including 21 novels and three non-fiction works, translated into several languages and serialised by the BBC. She has published two children’s books and more than 50 short stories, syndicated worldwide.
Her first novel, No White Coat (Hodder & Stoughton 1957) was an instant success followed by four more `medical’ novels. Tapping away at her Remington typewriter often with a baby daughter on her lap as patients beat their way to the surgery attached to the house, Rosemary introduced readers to the frequently sad but hilarious world of general practice. Her seven medical novels in the 50s and 60s heralded the modern medical drama. They first appeared under a male pseudonym, Robert Tibber, but their success eventually led to media interviews with the author and other public appearances as well as providing an introduction to the perilous early days of the National Health Service.
No White Coat was included in the German language anthology of Best Doctor Stories (Benziger, 1995) alongside works of AJ Cronin, Albert Camus and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In 2016, 59 years after its original publication, it was serialised in a Bavarian Sunday paper. Her two popular children’s books, Aristide, a stirring tale about a French boy in Britain, wittily illustrated by Quentin Blake’) and Aristide in Paris were described by the Times Educational Supplement as “a child’s Lord of the Flies which begged to be filmed.”
A further 14 novels on more general topics were well received, including her observation of Anglo-Jewry against the backdrop of a besieged Israel. A keen observer of late-20th-century Anglo-Jewish experience, Friedman’s Shelton Trilogy which began with Proofs of Affection in 1982, brought her own authentic insight into contemporary Anglo-Jewish family life, navigating the friction between traditional Orthodoxy and modern secularism.
Two works of non-fiction, The Writing Game and A Writer’s Commonplace Book were followed by a memoir, Life is a Joke, in which she chronicles her life-threatening cancer in non-sentimental terms, and three successful London stage plays, Home Truths (starring Julie-Kate Olivier, daughter of Sir Laurence) which toured the UK, Change of Heart and An Eligible Man, the latter translated into Polish and produced in Kielce where it remains in the repertoire.
Friedman’s articles appeared in the Guardian, The Times and The Sunday Times, and she also reviewed fiction for the TLS and The Sunday Times and wrote for television’s Doctors and Shrinks. She was the sole judge of the Author’s Club First Novel Award (1989), a judge of the Betty Trask Fiction Award (1991) and chair of the judges for the Jewish Quarterly Literary prize (1993) and the Macmillan Silver Pen Awards (1996 and 1997).
A long-standing member of PEN she served on the Executive Committee from 1993-1998, was a voting member of Bafta, a member of the Writers’ Guild, the Royal Society of Literature and the Society of Authors (Executive Committee 1989-92).
Born in Brondesbury Park, London, in 1929 to Maurice, a coat manufacturer, and Priscilla Tibber (née Deyong), Rosemary was the second of their three children. Anthony became a circuit judge, and Jacqueline, a social worker. Her education at South Hampstead High School was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, leading to evacuation to the countryside and a sporadic education. Returning to London as the war ended she studied for her Higher Certificate examination in the Anderson shelters at Queen’s College, Harley Street and her aptitude for drama saw her take the lead in several school plays.
Her love of English, written and spoken, was inspired by `Miss Kynaston’, headmistress and English tutor, although it many years later that she realised her essays had received complementary remarks and enthusiastic praise. Unfortunately these were not enough to secure a place at University College London where the English department was full by the time she applied, and she unenthusiastically joined the two other women in the then male environment of the law faculty.
Unable to get her head around Constitutional Law and the case of the `carbolic smoke ball’ she was rescued by a handsome fifth year, Bart’s medical student, Dennis Friedman, who saved the situation with an offer of marriage which was enthusiastically accepted. They married in St John’s Wood Synagogue after a whirlwind romance which was to last for more than 60 years.
An early inspiration for her was the 16th-century social philosopher Michel de Montaigne. In 2017, the publication of her last book, Final Draft, a collection of 35 witty and pertinent essays including, On Growing Old, (long-listed for the Notting Hill Essay Prize), Lying in the Bath, The Potent Appeal of Cheap Music, The Cyber World and the ubiquitous tweets of world leaders was widely reviewed as a significant, Montaigne-style reflection on ageing.
Interviewed on its publication by Gerald Isaaman of the Camden New Journal she described Montaigne as her guide and inspiration: “He used his essays,” she explained, “to inform the reader of everything that came into his head, sharing his experience of what it was like to be human.”
She added: “In essays or reflections, as in life, there are no easy answers, no neat solutions. The old Yiddish saying postulates that ‘it is easy to sit on the fire with someone else’s tuchus’. Montaigne is brave enough to put his own backside into the flames and tell us what it feels like.”
The advent of the computer sidelined Friedman’s faithful Remington typewriter, and, when the couples’ four daughters, Susan, Louise, Charlotte and Emma, were old enough for school, she was free to increase her literary output. Other domestic changes followed. Dennis Friedman qualified in psychiatry, his first love, and swapped the hectic life of an NHS GP for the successful private practice of a prominent psychiatrist. He published his insights into the royal family in Inheritance: A Psychological History of The Royal Family..
No longer having to live “above the shop”, the family moved to a sprawling house in Stanmore, Middlesex, facing the cricket ground, and later to St Katharine’s Precinct, a five-storied residence in Regent’s Park whose top floor could at last house Rosemary’s dedicated study.
As they completed their education and left their various schools, Susan, the eldest, opted for a career in journalism, Louise studied for a PhD in cancer research at the Hammersmith Hospital and later became a painter, Charlotte became a family lawyer - and later a psychotherapist - and Emma, having qualified in medicine at the former Middlesex hospital became a Clinical Radiologist at the Royal London Hospital. Despite their hectic lives, the four girls found time to marry, write books on a variety of subjects and between them produce ten grandchildren (five boys and five girls), now established in a variety of careers from medicine and material engineering to commerce. Four great grandchildren followed.
The frequent visits of her grandchildren were a source of great comfort to Rosemary when Dennis, the love of her long life, succumbed in 2014 to pulmonary fibrosis. She is survived by her daughters Susan, Louise, Charlotte and Emma, ten grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
Rosemary Friedman: born February 5,1929. Died June 30, 2026
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