A ray of sunshine, she was a poster girl for the Olympics
TAnyA was an only child. She was beautiful, sporty, arty and popular at home and at boarding school.
She was brilliant at having fun (if not the greatest academic — there were a lot of rows over homework!) and, at 5ft 10in and with amazing curly golden hair, was like a ray of sunshine when she walked into a room.
She found her calling in photography — studying a BA honours degree at Chelsea School of Art and then the london College of Printing.
Tanya loved her work and was very talented, jetting round the world to do big fashion shoots for GQ magazine, the Sunday Times, Cosmopolitan and esquire as well as taking portraits of everyone from ballerina darcey Bussell to actor Jamie dornan.
In 2002 she produced Kiss, an iconic photograph of two girls kissing that was put up on one of the largest billboards in london and ended up on bedroom walls all around the world.
But her proudest moment came in 2012 when she created three of the official posters for the london olympic and Paralympic Games — the only unknown alongside well- known artists such as Tracey emin.
If her life sounded glamorous, her head was never turned. She worked hard, travelled, played tennis and basketball, walked her dog eight miles every day and remained rounded and grounded.
Sadly, while she loved the thrill of seeing her work published, she was never as confident as she should have been about her amazing talents.
recently, she’d started to branch out. She set up a company making bespoke mugs that was beginning to take off. Spurred on by all the Brexit discussions, she joined the young Conservatives and was beginning to get involved in politics. She campaigned for animal rights and was always interested in what was going on in the world.
After a couple of disastrous relationships, Tanya was single, but was far too busy living and having fun to worry too much about meeting someone and settling down. Her biggest love was her blue roan cocker spaniel, romeo, who went everywhere with her.
The day before she died, we’d been together walking romeo on Primrose Hill in london, chatting, laughing and catching up. But suddenly she’d felt a bit ‘ off ’, somehow — grotty, with a tummy ache and cold feet. It worried us. She’d never been ill in her life — she didn’t drink or smoke and was incredibly healthy — so we called out a doctor. He prescribed paracetamol and a good night’s sleep.
But the next morning I went in to check on her and, as she tried to get up, she died in my arms.
She had suffered from hepatic sarcoidosis, an incredibly rare illness that doctors said was ‘like a bomb going off in her body’.
friends and colleagues travelled from all round the world for her funeral. If only she’d known how popular and well respected she was. If only my exceptional daughter was still here.