Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock

Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Prior's Field School and St Swithun's School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is philosophy, ethics and existentialism. Places of work recorded in the authority are London. Employment is recorded with St Hugh's College, Girton College and Gresham College. Positions recorded include member of the House of Lords and principal. Distinctions recorded are Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Albert Medal, Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

• Honorific Prefix — The Right Honourable • Name — The Baroness Warnock • Honorific Suffix — FMedSci • Birth Name — Helen Mary Wilson • Born — 14 April 1924 • Birthplace — Winchester, England • Died — 20 March 2019 • Place of death — London, England • Known for — Philosopher of morality, education, and mind, and a writer on existentialism • Education — * St Swithun's School, Winchester • Prior's Field School • Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford • Boards — Active Training and Education Trust • Children — 5 • Relatives — Duncan Wilson (brother) Felix Schuster (maternal grandfather)

Warnock was born Helen Mary Wilson on 14 April 1924 in Winchester, England, and was the youngest of seven children. Her mother Ethel was the daughter of the successful banker and financier Felix Schuster. Her father Archibald Edward Wilson (1875–1923) was a housemaster and German teacher at Winchester College who died from diphtheria seven months before her birth. Her mother did not marry again. Warnock was brought up by her mother and a nanny. She never knew her eldest brother, Malcolm (1907–1969), who had autism and was cared for in a nursing home, spending his last days in a Dorset hospital. Another brother died when very young. Her other brother, Duncan Wilson (1911–1983), was a British diplomat who became Ambassador to the Soviet Union before taking up an appointment as master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. When Warnock was seven months old the family moved to Kelso House, a three-floor Victorian house, now the music centre at Peter Symonds College. She and her sister Stefana were cared for primarily by the family nanny. Warnock was educated as a boarder at St Swithun's School, Winchester, followed by Prior's Field School in the town of Guildford in Surrey. Warnock said that when she was a child she was embarrassed by her mother, who looked different from most people, often by wearing long flowing dark red clothes and walking with turned out feet. However, when Warnock was about 15 years old, she began to admire her mother's eccentricity and independent thinking. The family's inherited wealth offered Warnock a privileged education; starting in 1942 she studied classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Her studies were interrupted during the war whilst she taught for two years at Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset. She returned to Oxford and graduated in 1948.

In the early 1960s, whilst still teaching at St Hugh's College, Warnock took a seat on the Oxfordshire Local Education Authority. From 1966 to 1972, she was Headmistress at the Oxford High School for Girls, giving up the position when her husband was appointed principal of Hertford College, Oxford. In the late 1970s, she published three books on the topic of education. In the 1980s and 1990s, she wrote a column for the Times Educational Supplement, as well as a pamphlet "Universities: Knowing Our Minds", and gave the Richard Dimbleby Lecture in 1985 on the topic, "Teacher Teach Thyself".

Warnock was a member of the Independent Broadcasting Authority from 1972 to 1983. In 1980, she was considered for the post of Chair of the Board of Governors of the BBC.

Because of her background as an educationalist, Warnock was appointed in 1974 to chair a UK inquiry on special education. Her report, published in 1978, brought radical change in the field, by placing emphasis on the teaching of learning-disabled children in mainstream schools and introducing a system of "statementing" children in order for them to gain entitlement to special educational support. Warnock subsequently expressed dissatisfaction with the system that she helped to create, calling it "appalling" because of the expense of its administration and its tendency to deny support to mildly disadvantaged children. She recommended the establishment of a new inquiry. From 1979 to 1984, she sat on a Royal Commission on environmental pollution. From 1982 to 1984, she chaired the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology. Her report on this occasion gave rise to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, which governs human fertility treatment and experiments using human embryos. Its effect has been to require licensing for procedures such as in vitro fertilisation and to ban research using human embryos more than 14 days old. According to Dame Susan Leather, a former chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, "perhaps the greatest achievement of the Warnock committee is that it managed to get an ethical consensus that people understood as well as shared". From 1984 to 1989, Warnock chaired a Home Office Committee on animal experimentation; she was a member of the Government advisory panel on spoliation from 1998. In 2008, Warnock, a committed advocate of euthanasia, caused controversy with an opinion that people with dementia should be allowed to elect to die if they felt they were "a burden to their family or the state". Aged 90, Warnock took part enthusiastically in a review of her public life as documented by BBC Sound Archives (12 July 2014).

Warnock was the President of Listening Books, a charity providing audiobooks for people who struggle to read due to an illness, disability, learning difficulty or mental health issue. She was a patron of The Iris Project, a charity that promotes the teaching of classics.

Warnock married Geoffrey Warnock, later vice-chancellor of Oxford University, in 1949. They had two sons and three daughters; he died in 1995. She died at her home in London on 20 March 2019. She was often described as an "atheist Anglican".

As chair of committees of inquiry: • The Warnock Report (1978): Special Educational Needs. London: HMSO (report by the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People) • The Warnock Report (1984): Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology. London: HMSO • Warnock, Mary (1978). Meeting Special Educational Needs: A brief guide by Mrs Mary Warnock to the report of the Committee of Enquiry into Education of Handicapped Children and Young People. London: HMSO As author: • Ethics Since 1900 (Oxford University Press, 1960); • The Philosophy of Sartre (Hutchinson University Press, 1963) • Existentialist Ethics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, New York: Springer, 1967) • Existentialism (Oxford Paperbacks, 1970) • Imagination (1976) • Schools of Thought (Faber and Faber, 1977); • Memory (1987) • The Uses of Philosophy (Blackwell, 1992) • Imagination and Time (Blackwell Publishers, 1994) • An Intelligent Person's Guide to Ethics (1998); • Mary Warnock: A Memoir – People and Places (Duckworth, 2001), • Making Babies: Is There a Right To Have Children? (2001) • Nature and Mortality: Recollections of a Philosopher in Public Life (2004); • Easeful Death, with Elisabeth MacDonald (OUP, 2008) • Dishonest to God: On Keeping Religion Out of Politics (Continuum, 2010); • Critical Reflections on Ownership (Edward Elgar, 2015); • Ronald W. Hepburn's Agnosticism, in Szécsényi, Endre (ed.), Aesthetics, Nature and Religion: Ronald W. Hepburn and his Legacy (Aberdeen UP, 2020), pp. 1 - 12, - This book is dedicated to the memory of Mary Warncok (1924-2019) As editor: • Sartre: A Collection of Critical Essays (1971) • Women Philosophers, London, J. M. Dent (1996) • Art for All?: Their Policies and Our Culture (2000; with Mark Wallinger)

Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock was recorded at birth as Helen Mary Wilson. The authorities additionally record the headings Helen Mary Warnock, Mary Warnock, Helen Mary Wilson, Helen Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock and Helen Mary Wilson, Baroness Warnock. Her recorded language was English. She was the child of Archibald Edward Wilson and Ethel Mary Schuster. She married Geoffrey Warnock. 4 children are recorded: Kathleen Warnock, Felix Geoffrey Warnock, James Marcus Alexander Warnock and Stephana Warnock.

Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock worked in philosophy, ethics, existentialism, philosophy of mind and philosophy of education. She was employed by St Hugh's College, Girton College, Gresham College, Lady Margaret Hall and Oxford High School. Recorded positions include member of the House of Lords, principal and head teacher. She belonged to British Academy. She worked at London.

Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock is recorded as having studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Prior's Field School and St Swithun's School.