Fay Godwin, former President of the Ramblers' Association, has died

Fay Godwin, former President of the Ramblers’ Association and one of Britain’s most talented landscape photographers, has died.

Fay was born in Berlin and after a brief dalliance in publishing began her photography career in 1969. Her father was a British diplomat and her mother an American painter. Britain's wild open spaces were the inspiration for most of her work and it led her to become president of the Ramblers’ Association in the late eighties. Her most famous work, Our Forbidden Land, a study on the destruction of the countryside by road building and development, galvanised many involved in the right to roam campaign. Her essay 'Who Owns the Land?' accused English Heritage and the National Trust of "copyrighting our heritage" but showed her deep commitment to those who loved the land and were dependent on it. It was during her presidency that the RA's long-running right-to-roam campaign was turned up to the full-strength pressure which ultimately resulted in the access provisions enshrined in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.

She is survived by her sons, Jeremy and Nick.