Marion Thorpe died on 6 March at the age of 87. Born into a Jewish Viennese family, the father having been a musician, Marion Thorpe studied at London’s Royal College of Music. She played the piano professionally, not as a soloist but forming a duo with Catherine Shanks. She became a good friend of Benjamin Britten. Through him she met her first husband, Lord Harewood, the artistic director of the Edinburgh and Leeds festivals from whom she divorced later. In 1963, she and piano teacher Fanny Waterman started the Leeds International Piano Competition. The pianist Moura Lympany introduced Marion to ther politician Jeremy Thorpe. They married in 1973.

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