This obituary was written by Linda’s widower Alan Slingsby.

Linda Quinn, editor of the Brixton Blog and Bugle, who died in February after a long illness, first encountered journalism as a student in Scotland.

The daughter of a lorry driver and a cleaner, she chose the newly opened Stirling University rather than the elite St Andrews, where she had been offered a place, explaining that she did not like the idea of wearing an academic gown.

At a time when the role of female student activists was often seen, at best, as taking the minutes, Linda, always a leader by example and by bringing people together, became president of the student union, uniting a range of left-wing groups.

It was in this role that she briefly became front-page news around the world.

A visit by the Queen to Stirling University saw a protest about conditions on the campus get out of hand, with the monarch encountering students face-to-face in a way that is inconceivable today.

Linda became the centre of a media feeding frenzy, described by the Scottish Sunday Express as “the most hated woman in Scotland”. Her mother was sacked from her cleaning job.

With her usual calmness under pressure, but with no experience and little assistance, she fielded media calls from Aberdeen to Australia, making the best anyone could have done of a very bad job.

An enraged establishment needed a scapegoat and chose Linda, who was expelled and had to battle for months to resume and complete her course.

Gifted with many physical and mental skills, Linda had learnt to touch type with a brief course at university and became a typesetter – and one of the very few female members of the London National Graphical Association, the union of skilled printworkers.

One of the most memorable of her many stories about her life and adventures at work saw her rejected as a typesetter by a North London print firm because of her sex.

It was a time when the NGA decided who worked where through the “closed shop”. Linda, who had returned to the union’s “call office” to explain what had happened, was given her taxi fare and told to go back and tell the firm it was her or no-one.

Once through the door, within a few months, she had become Imperial Mother of the Chapel – chair of the joint committee of the half dozen print unions at the firm.

Among several highlights of this role for Linda was negotiating quadruple time for Christmas Day working to typeset the Boxing Day Sporting Life – along with a split shift so that everybody could eat Christmas dinner with their family, as well as time off in lieu.

Linda also became a leading light and inspirational speaker in left-wing and anti-racist activity in Brixton and South London.

Transitioning to journalism as new technology destroyed printers’ jobs, she worked on a variety of publications from AutoExpress to Robert Maxwell’s ill-fated London evening paper, the London Daily News, and The Observer.

For several years she worked as a journalist and PR for a trade union before becoming head of publicity at the New Opportunities Fund, one of the bodies distributing funds from the National Lottery.

She oversaw a name change to the Big Lottery Fund, part of a drive she backed enthusiastically to get more funds to hard-to-reach people and communities.

She retired as the fund’s director of marketing and communications after inspiring colleagues and the people she had met through the innovative schemes she organised to help overlooked and misunderstood people and communities.

Always hands-on, one of Linda’s memorable initiatives saw her travelling the UK to publicise a grant scheme accompanied by young people including former members of notorious gangs from Birmingham.

In her retirement, when one of the former gang members, now studying for a degree, asked Linda the best way get tape-recorded interviews transcribed, she told her: “send them to me” and, still a formidable touch-typist, typed them up herself.

A planned retirement life of leisure, gentle skiing, and professional-level knitting and clothes-making was put on hold when she was asked in 2015 to become editor of the Brixton Blog and Bugle when the founders moved on.

Linda led the revival of the monthly printed Bugle and expansion of the Blog as well as making their parent organisation, Brixton Media, a community interest company.

In line with her passion for passing on her knowledge and wisdom to young people, especially those from backgrounds like her own, she made sure that one of the CIC’s aims is to provide opportunities for aspiring young journalists to work on important stories and obtain bylines in print and online.

Her recovery from the rare auto-immune disease vasculitis in 2018 after 10 days in intensive care with her lung function performed by a machine and daily total changes of blood at St Thomas’ hospital did not stop her.

Her humanity, humour, communication skills and interest in people and practical ways of helping them meant that, while recuperating in St Thomas’, she was asked to act as a subject for medical students practising their bedside manner.

Linda’s amazing recovery was not the first. Combining a relentlessly positive attitude to life and immense physical resilience, she had already survived tuberculosis and a ruptured gall bladder and several lesser health issues.

After yet another health setback, the final eight months of her life were in bed at home, where she continued her lively communication with scores of friends and work for the Brixton Blog and Brixton Media.

She was determined to reach her 70th birthday in February and did so, but passed away peacefully a few days later.

Linda is survived by a husband, Alan Slingsby, and a brother, Billy Quinn.