Margaret McCreath completed her secondary education at Douglas-Ewart High School in Newton Stewart, where she was Dux and Gold Medallist. She went on to the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1947 with mathematics as her main subject. Following a year at secretarial college, she held appointments as Personal Assistant to senior industrialists, to the Chief Education Officer of Cambridgeshire and to the Principal of Bedford College, University of London. In 1957, she became PA to the then Rector of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, Sir Patrick Linstead, who was closely associated with a number of major national enquiries, including the influential Robbins Committee on the future of higher education. Margaret McCreath gave immense help to the Robbins Committee. She joined join Leeds University as Personal Assistant to Lord Boyle in 1970.
In all she did, she brought a quiet but firm personality, sound judgement and a capacity for meticulously fulfilling her brief. Margaret enjoyed a happy and harmonious relationship with her colleagues, reflecting her kind and wise personality, and her considerable gift for friendship.
Art, music and literature were all very important to Margaret McCreath and her early retirement in 1982 provided her with much increased opportunity to enjoy these pastimes. Art in particular became a consuming enthusiasm. She proved a gifted amateur artist.
Margaret did not marry. She died, age 83, on 11 July 2008, at Wheatfields Hospice, Leeds.
Abridged from her obituary on the University of Leeds Website, March 2009.