Nora Leah Beloff

Background

Beloff was born on January 24, 1919 in Kensington, London, England to Simon Beloff and Marie Katzin.

Education

Nora received her education at King Alfred School and graduated from Oxford University in 1940.

Career

Beloff began her long career in international politics in 1941 when she joined the British Foreign Office’s political intelligence department. In 1944 she served on the staff at the British Embassy in Paris. Before settling down into her thirty-year career with Britain’s The Observer newspaper in 1948, she had short stints as a journalist for Reuters News Agency and The Economist.

While with The Observer, she spent many years in Paris, Moscow, and Washington, DC, and contributed articles to such journals as Atlantic Monthly and Daily Telegraph. Beloff also wrote several books, including a report on the Labour Party government, Freedom Under Foot: The Battle Over the Closed Shop in British Journalism, which caused then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson to attempt to have her removed from the staff of The Observer.

Nora's other works include The General Says No: Britain’s Exclusion from Europe, No Travel like Russian Travel (published in the United States as Inside the Soviet Empire: Myth and Reality), and Tito’s Flawed Legacy: Yogoslavia and the West 1939-1984 (published in the United States as Tito’s Flawed Legacy: Yugoslavia and the West 1939 Till Now).

Works

More photos

• book

  • Tito's Flawed Legacy: Yugoslavia And The West Since 1939 1939
  • Freedom Under Foot: Battle Over the Closed Shop in British Journalism 1976
  • Transit of Britain 1973

Connections

Beloff was married to Clifford Makins, a sports editor for The Observer, from 1977 until his death in 1990.

Father:

Simon Beloff

Mother:

Marie Katzin

Brother:

Max Beloff

Brother:

John Beloff

Sister:

Anne Beloff-Chain

Sister:

Renee Soskin

husband:

Clifford Makins