My mum had polio, so she couldn’t hold the paper up for long periods, and so, from the time I started learning to read, I would lie the paper flat on the floor and read it aloud to her.

When I was 12 and growing up in rural Gloucestershire, my favourite thing to read was Nancy Banks-Smith’s TV review column in the Guardian. Her writing was funny, relevant and eye-opening – it exposed me to subjects that I would otherwise not have heard about.



Barbara Jennings.

I clearly recall the day I read Nancy’s review of a documentary about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed by electric shock at Sing Sing prison in 1953 on charges of espionage. Julius was executed first; he died after the first electric shock. But after Ethel was given the normal three electric shocks, her heart was still beating. Two more electric shocks were applied, and at the conclusion, eyewitnesses reported that smoke rose from her head.

It was such a shocking and graphic description. I remember seeing photographs and thinking that Ethel looked not dissimilar from my mother – and my stance on capital punishment was set in stone then and there. I was too young at the time to have been allowed to watch the programme, so the TV review was the next best thing. Nancy’s writing made the scenes so real.

I asked my mother about the death penalty, and I remember the feeling of horror as she told me it no longer existed in Britain, but it had only been outlawed within my short lifetime, and that it was still legal in the US. Even to my young mind, the arguments used to support it seemed to be incredibly outdated; knowing the date and time of one’s death the very definition of “cruel and unusual”. Not least because it often goes wrong, as it did with Ethel Rosenberg.

I came immediately to the conclusion that capital punishment was wrong, evil and inhumane, and could never be justified under any circumstances, and I’ve never wavered from that view. On top of that, the emotional impact of the review triggered a lifelong passion for human rights issues. As soon as I could, I became a supporter of Reprieve and Amnesty, both of whom campaign against capital punishment. I also write a blog and try as much as I can to emulate Nancy’s style – informed, fluent, but from the heart.

This opposition to capital punishment was championed by the Guardian, and just one way in which my own and my family’s beliefs aligned with those of the paper – and my route into what would go on to be my main news source as an adult. I read this TV review 40 years ago, but the discussion it sparked with my mother is still relevant today.

Barbara Jennings, 57, lives in Tooting, south London, and works as a senior manager for an insurance company.

We are keen to hear from Members about the Guardian articles that changed their views on the world, politics, society or culture. If you would like to share your experience, please email sophie.zeldin-oneill@theguardian.com, with a brief outline of the article you’d choose and why.