Author: Joan Cockin
Alternate names: Edith Joan Burbidge Macintosh; Edith Joan Burbidge; Edith Burbidge; Edith Burbidge Macintosh; Edith Macintosh; Joan Macintosh; Dr. Joan Macintosh
Bio: > Joan Cockin was the pen name of Edith Joan Burbidge Macintosh, PhD, CBE. She was one of the very first women to be a British diplomat. Brought up in America, educated at Oxford, and married in India – her career cut short, as was then the rule for women, by marriage there to a Scottish banker. She was part of the UK delegation at the founding of both NATO and the Council of Europe. Macintosh went on to have a second career as a trail-blazing consumer champion, co-founding the National Consumer Council and the Scottish Consumer Council, acting as Legal Ombudsman for Scotland, founding and chairing the Insurance Ombudsman service, and serving on a Royal Commission. As Cockin she only published three mysteries: *Curiosity Killed the Cat* (1947), *Villainy at Vespers* (1949),  and *Deadly Earnest* (1952) - biography by Galileo Publishers.