I was recently asked to write about someone who “shaped” me. My parents being too close, too complex for me to analyse, I tried to think of someone else. Days later, in a clear moment of instant certainty, I thought of Magoo. Margaret Gray, but known to us as “Magoo”, was my parents’ Irish maid who came to work in 1936 and stayed with our family for over two decades. Though she ironed, cleaned, cooked, served at table and child-minded, she was much more than a maid. Born in County Cork, Ireland, around 1890, she lived on the land in…