America’s first female secretary of state has died of cancer, aged 84

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, who died in Washington, DC, on March 23rd, served under Bill Clinton as UN ambassador before becoming America’s first woman secretary of state. She recalled America’s failure to stop the Rwandan genocide as her greatest regret. NATO’s eastward expansion was among her successes—and personal, given her history. Born in Prague in 1937, with her family she fled Nazism, then communism. Mrs Albright had thought that her family was Catholic. Only after she was secretary of state did she learn that she was born Jewish and lost three of her grandparents in the Holocaust.■

For exclusive insight and reading recommendations from our correspondents in America, sign up to Checks and Balance, our weekly newsletter.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “America’s first female secretary of state has died of cancer, aged 84”