Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Beatrice Katz Serota, Baroness Serota DBE (15 October 1919 21 October 2002) was a British Government minister and a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords. Beatrice Katz had been brought up in the East End, the daughter of Jewish refugees from central Europe. She was nicknamed "Bea" or "Bee" from an early age. Her future husband, Stanley Serota, whose family had come from Russia, lived next door; they were married in 1942. He qualified as a civil engineer. She was educated at John Howard School and at the LSE, where she read economics and where she later became an honorary fellow. She joined the civil service in 1941 and worked in the crucial Ministry of Fuel and Power through the difficult years of the Second World War until 1946, when her son, Nicholas Serota, who would later become the director of the Tate Gallery, was born. Two years later, a daughter,Judith, was born, who would pursue a career in the arts. Bea Serota was not the sort of politician who made headlines; she was the sort who got on with the job, who found out where the oil-cans were kept and made sure the wheels went on turning.