Mary Cosh

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Mary Cosh was a British freelance journalist and local historian, best known for writing about Islington, a London borough. She was born in Bristol on 3 March 1919, the daughter of Arthur Strode Cosh and Ellen Cosh, and went to Clifton High School. She worked at the Ministry of Labour from 1937 to 1942, then served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service during World War II from 1942 to 1945, where she became a Leading Wren. After the war she studied English at St Anne’s College, Oxford, earning a BA in 1949.

From 1950 to 1951 she worked with the Council of Industrial Design during the Festival of Britain. From 1953 she was a freelance writer and researcher, including work with author James Leasor on books such as The Red Fort, War at the Top, and The Plague and the Fire. She wrote for journals including The Spectator, The Times, and Country Life. Her major work on Islington, A History of Islington (2005), was the first full history of the area since the mid-1800s.

Cosh also wrote two Scottish history books: Inveraray and the Dukes of Argyll (with Ian Lindsay, 1973) and Edinburgh, the golden age (2005), about Edinburgh in the Scottish Enlightenment (1760–1832). She became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1986. Mary Cosh died in December 2019 at the age of 100.