Jean Denton, Baroness Denton of Wakefield

Jean Moss was born in Wakefield on 1935, the daughter of Charles and Kathleen Moss (born Tuke). Her father worked at a hospital and her mother was a school cook. When she was 8 she represented Yorkshire in a child's version of the radio programme Round Britain Quiz. Moss attended Rothwell Grammar School near Leeds. When she was fourteen she had to take bed rest for a year to cure a kidney infection, despite this she became head girl and won a scholarship to attend the London School of Economics. She gained a BSc in Economics in 1958. Having earned her Economics degree she joined the marketing department of the consumer company Procter & Gamble. ==Career==

From 1961 to 1964 she was in the marketing department of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) which was part of The Economist group of companies. At about this time she became interested in motor-racing. She learnt to drive late at the age of 26. Until 1966 she worked for IPC Media and until 1969 she led the Hotel and Catering Department of the University of Surrey. In her spare time she won the 1967 and 1968 title of Britain's Woman Racing Champion. She served as a Baroness-in-Waiting from 1991–2. She was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry from 1992–3, at the Department of Energy from 1993–4, and at the Northern Ireland Office from 1994–7. After the 1997 general election, she served as the Conservative opposition spokesman on Trade and Industry in the House of Lords. ==Personal life and death==

In 1959, Jean Moss married Tony Denton, an engineer; they divorced in 1974. Denton was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1989, which was treated at the time with a lumpectomy. In 1998, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and she died at a care home in London on 5 February 2001, at the age of 65. == References ==