The Baroness Henig, CBE, DL 1943-2024

 Baroness Henig, CBE, DL, who died 29 February, 2024, aged 80, was an academic historian and a Labour party politician.

Ruth Beatrice Henig, Baroness Henig (née Munzer) was born 10 November 1943. Her parents were Jewish refugees who came to the United Kingdom from the Netherlands in 1940. Henig was married in 1966 to fellow academic Stanley Henig, who shortly afterward became a Labour member of Parliament. They had two children and divorced in 1993. Their son, Simon Henig, is the former leader of the Durham County Council, former chair of the North East Combined Authority, and a lecturer in politics at Sunderland University. She remarried in 1994 to Jack Johnstone.

Henig was educated at Wyggeston Girls Grammar School in Leicester, and at Bedford College, London, where she graduated in 1965 with a B.A. in history. She was awarded a PhD in history from Lancaster University in 1978, where she was a lecturer in Modern European History.

Henig served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities from 1997 to 2000, and in April 2006, she was one of six people to receive the first Honorary Fellowships of Lancaster University.

She was appointed CBE in 2000, and on 8 June 2004 was raised to the peerage for life as Baroness Henig, of Lancaster in the County of Lancashire. She became a deputy speaker of the House of Lords in 2018.

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