After studying English Literature at the University of Sussex, Marilyn had a varied and interesting career, working for The Times, Thomson Holidays and various advertising agencies before training as a legal executive in the 1990s. She was the Executive Director at Barnet Law Service, which provides free legal advice on immigration, asylum and housing law. She was a magistrate and a school governor.

Marilyn was a passionate world traveller – visiting six of the seven continents with Stephen – and together they had many adventures, such as sleeping in an Amazon rainforest, watching penguins in Antarctica, walking along the Great Wall of China and posing for photos on the Bolivian salt flats.

She documented her mission to visit every capital city in Europe with her own travel blog called “Little City Sparrow”. To read about her adventures spanning 40 years and travelling to 49 cities, please click here:  Little City Sparrow.

Bursting with energy and a great organiser, Marilyn maintained life-long friendships dating back to her school days and loved to host dinner parties and cook for family and friends, carefully annotating the pages of her favourite cookbooks with her own comments and corrections. She was an avid theatre-goer and keen reader, as well as managing to find time to sing in a choir, attend art classes and play the saxophone.

Her Much Loved page has raised over £4,000 for MacMillan Cancer Support and the Whittington Hospital. If you’d like to contribute, please visit her page: https://marilynsparrow.muchloved.com/