Murray was brought up a Christian in the
Church of England. At the age of 14, however, just before they visited
Auschwitz concentration camp, her father revealed he was Jewish by birth from his mother Edith Field (originally Feld). Murray subsequently wrote on 21 December 2022 in
The Daily Mail and on Twitter: "Officially I have no claim to the Jewish faith, but I feel it deeply, and have done since the age of 14 when my father revealed to me what, until then, he had kept a closely guarded secret. I am not religious, but I feel my Jewish genes. They are part of my race. They took me to
Israel in my early 20s, against the advice of my parents who were afraid for me, but I wanted to know more." She spent a year working at the
Frank Meisler sculpture gallery in
Jaffa. She also wrote of her abhorrence of racism: "young people need to understand the history of slavery and how it influences modern racism, they need to understand what lay behind the Holocaust and how it continues to affect the Jewish population." She married her first husband, Brian Murray, aged 21; their marriage ended after six years. She later began a relationship with David Forgham, with whom she had two sons and ultimately married in 2002.
Health In December 2006 Murray announced, at the end of ''Woman's Hour
, that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She informed her audience that her prognosis was good and she did indeed return early in 2007. She reported that the most emotionally upsetting moment was losing her hair and used this as an item on the centrality of hair to definitions of femininity. In 2020 Murray announced that she would demonstrate proper self-breast examination techniques on The Real Full Monty on Ice'' television programme, alongside
Linda Lusardi and
Hayley Tamaddon. Murray was vocal and visible in the media with regard to her own experience of
menopause,
HRT and the importance of raising awareness of this aspect of women's health in the
workplace and more generally. In 2008 Murray had a
hip replacement following
avascular necrosis. She had a
sleeve gastrectomy in June 2015 and had lost more than by October that year.
Death Murray died on 12 March 2026 at the age of 75. Her death was announced a week later, with a tribute paid to her from
Tim Davie, the
director-general of the BBC, who described her as a "broadcasting icon" and said that in her work on ''Woman's Hour'' she "created a safe space for her audience thanks to her warmth, intelligence and courage", adding, "Her legacy endures in the countless conversations she started, the many issues she championed and the lives she touched." ==Charities==