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‘We want to keep her name alive’: charitable trust for Sarah Hughes

The friends and family of Sarah Hughes, the Observer and Guardian journalist who died last week, have set up a crowdfunding website in her name with the aim of raising £10,000 to set up a charitable trust in her memory.

Sarah died at home on Monday, aged 48, after a long battle with cancer. She was a regular writer for the Observer for more than 20 years, primarily writing on arts and culture but more recently a series of moving and powerful pieces about living with a terminal illness.

The Sarah Hughes Trust will aim to establish an annual lecture in Sarah’s name to be given at the History of Medicine Society at the Royal Society of Medicine. It will raise funds for the furtherance of education and research in the humanities and the history of medicine, and to provide support for aspiring journalists from less privileged backgrounds.

The family and Sarah’s friends are asking for donations from those who knew Sarah or who were affected by her work.

“It’s so cruel that Sarah has been taken from us all at such a young age; aside from the loss to her family and friends, she had so much more work still to write, so many more words left unspoken,” said her best friend and author, Harriet Tyce. “We want to keep her name alive, and we would be very grateful for any donation that those who were touched by her life and work might be able to give.”

Tyce is also in the process of planning an online memorial event at which she hopes many of the authors and actors whose work Sarah championed over the last two decades will read tributes.

Those wishing to donate to the trust should visit justgiving.com/crowdfunding/sarahhughestrust. Harriet Tyce can be reached via that page or messages can be sent to her via Twitter @harriet_tyce