By the mid-1980s Mary Warnock professed herself to be an authority on “the Whitehall lunch” — as well as just about everything else. According to the veteran of many government inquiries, from pollution to animal experimentation, by far the nastiest was the Home Office lunch, which consisted of “little bits of pork pie, and sandwiches wrapped up in clingfilm”.
The main legacy in the long public life of the philosopher, ethicist and mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, was undoubtedly the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology between 1982 and 1984. As chairwoman, she arguably quelled public disquiet and created a consensus on the bioethical issues of human fertilisation and experimentation on embryos.
As a result, public policy was legally enshrined in the Human