Romola Christopherson

Long-serving government information officer who offered an insider's view of 'Campbell's kingdom'

Romola Carol Andrea Christopherson, government information officer: born Leicester 10 January 1939; Deputy Press Secretary to the Prime Minister 1983-84; Head of Information, Department of Energy 1984-86; Director of Information, then of Press and Publicity, Department of Health and Social Security, later Department of Health 1986-98; CB 1998; Associate Director, Media Strategy 1999-2002; died London 16 January 2003.

Unlike so many of her colleagues who lost their jobs in the cull of government information officers after the 1997 general election, Romola Christopherson not only retained her post as Director of Press and Publicity at the Department of Health but went on in retirement to become a respected commentator on the numerous controversies surrounding the media strategies adopted by Tony Blair's government.

Within a year of the shakeout conducted by New Labour, she found she was one of only two heads of information still in post; 15 of her fellow directors, who had also served under the previous Conservative government, had either been sacked or moved to other jobs.

Throughout a career of almost 40 years as a Civil Service information officer she had been determined to demonstrate that it was possible to serve governments of differing political persuasions; her colleagues knew how much she valued her appointment as CB in 1998 and the "Thank You" letters she had received from two Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

She marked her retirement in January 1999, just days before her 60th birthday, by publishing a trenchant account of the changes which had been forced through by Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's official spokesman. She concluded that "Campbell's Kingdom" had come to pass, that "Alastair is the monarch of all he surveys."

Christopherson's durability was hard-won; she had gained the respect of successive ministers by being prepared to deliver blunt advice on the pitfalls of putting too much faith in publicity; journalists appreciated her practice of playing it straight, even if she could not give them the story they wanted; and her colleagues admired her no- nonsense approach and the self- deprecating way in which she would dismiss her work as being "at the showbiz end of the Civil Service" and having little real impact when it came to the delivery of services.

She was educated at Leicester Collegiate School for Girls and joined the Civil Service after reading English at St Hugh's College, Oxford. She started at the Ministry of Technology in 1962 and served in several departments including Environment, Agriculture and the Northern Ireland Office, before getting her first high-profile post in 1983 when she went to Downing Street and was appointed deputy to Bernard Ingham, press secretary to the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Although she spent less than two years in No 10, Christopherson had made a name for herself among lobby correspondents and was rewarded with rapid promotion, becoming Head of Information at the Department of Energy. In 1986 she was appointed Director of Information at what was then the combined Department of Health and Social Security, where she served seven secretaries of state and remained until her retirement.

Christopherson's survival after the 1997 general election was due in large measure to her philosophical acceptance of changes wrought in her department by Joe McCrea, special adviser to the Secretary of State, Frank Dobson. McCrea was one of New Labour's most forceful young spin doctors and in order to ensure a faster response from Civil Service information officers he introduced procedures for "health line briefings" and "health rebuttals".

In an article for Progress, the magazine for New Labour activists, McCrea described the "battle" he had waged to get the standard of briefing up to the level achieved by Millbank. A photograph accompanying the article showed McCrea standing beside Christopherson who was seen sitting calmly at her desk.

Within days of her retirement, she revealed how tense it had been during the first months of the Blair government when it had had been "an uncomfortably testing time" for Whitehall press officers who found themselves "being compared to the Millbank dream machine and found wanting".

Her readiness to offer an insider's opinion on the working of "Campbell's Kingdom" meant that she was much in demand as a writer and commentator on the trials and tribulations of Labour's spin doctors. She was often heard on Radio 4. She had been booked to speak to a media seminar in February. Her subject: "A Perspective on the Curse or Death of Spin: the view of a not-too-distant practitioner."

Nicholas Jones