Obituary: Sasha Young

LIKE Karl Miller, I first knew Sasha Young when we were undergraduates, writes Thom Gunn (further to the obituary by Karl Miller, 25 June). She was part of our gang, and meeting her at intervals years after I have thought that she of all my contemporaries was the one who had grown into the person I would most have hoped for. Perhaps she was that rare thing, somebody who grew up fully.

When she was in San Francisco a few years ago she was learning all she could about Aids - she was concerned that at that time public education about it was less advanced in Britain than it was in the US - so that she could take home this knowledge and write and broadcast about it. She was responsible, sane, witty, and above all humane - humane in a very tough and practical sense. I was proud to know her in the early 1950s and I was proud to know her in the early 1990s. She was an adult and made me feel like Peter Pan.