She turned an inner-city canal into a children's paradise.
Wednesday 8 December 1999 01.07 GMT.
In the late 1960s Crystal Hale, who has died aged 83, took on the British Waterways Board to save the City Road basin of the Grand Union Canal on the edge of Islington, north London. The result of her victory was her founding in 1970 of the Islington Boat Club, used by 7,000 children a year.
Hale was once described by her brother as having all the qualities of Queen Bodicea - excluding the bloodthirsty ones. Others drew parellels with Lady Bracknell, Florence Nightingale and Barbara Castle.
Crystal was born the eldest daughter of the writer Sir Alan (AP) Herbert, and educated at the Dragon school, Oxford - where the girls played rugby - and St Paul's school, Hammersmith, where the family house was by the river. She then lived with a family in Frankfurt, avoided marriage to a young German, and learnt the language. Back in England, aged 18, she married John Pudney, a writer, radio producer and poet, whose poem, For Johnny, was made famous by Michael Redgrave in the 1945 film The Way To The Stars.
The newlyweds motor- cycled off to make their home in Cornwall, and Crystal acquired a converted lifeboat. She once enticed the editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin, to crew for her. As war closed in, John and Crystal took on a farm in Essex. From there she worked on the BBC radio programmes, The Country Magazine and Woman At War, a precursor of Woman's Hour. Post-war she edited Family magazine.
In 1955 Crystal and John were divorced, and she married Lionel Hale, the playwright and sometime co-chairman of the radio programme, Round Britain Quiz. Thirteen years later they moved to an Islington house overlooking the Grand Union Canal.
Crystal was an obvious god-earth mother of the Islington chattering classes. Chris Smith, when a young MP, earned her approval, and they continued to hold each other in great affection. I first met her at a party in 1965 given by Lord Patrick Kin ross. Amongst the other women guests were Diana Duff-Cooper, Freya Stark, Rebecca West and Moira Budberg, who claimed friendship with Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. As the ladies looked on rather condescendingly, we were introduced to each other as "fellow socialists".
A year ago, at Islington's King's Head pub theatre, Crystal's father's musical, Bless The Bride, was revived. She swept in with her entourage - including her sister Jocelyn Herbert, the stage designer of the Royal Court Theatre. They concentrated on the stage with steely eyes, and then, eventually, came approving applause.
AP Herbert also wrote an other musical, The Water Gypsies, about the enchantment of the inland waterways. It was a delight his daughter shared. In 1996 the Royal Yachting Association gave her its award for social achievement on the water. At her request, yesterday we took her on her last journey through the Islington canal tunnel aboard a narrow boat. It was a spectacular event.
Crystal is survived by a son and two daughters from her marriage to John Pudney, and by a daughter from her marriage to Lionel Hale.
Crystal Selwyn Hale, journalist, boat club pioneer, born December 10 1915; died November 26 1999.