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1950 was better suited for a potential English scholar. I was woefully ill-equipped even to teach English to foreigners.’ Daphne Wall (read Modern Languages) wrote of her tutor, ‘She sat by a cosy fire and I felt she might doze off any minute’. Unqualified praise came from Bridget Davies: ‘Jean Banister was an outstanding tutor and friend to us.’ Marie Thomas remembered that, despite reservations, she ‘enjoyed and benefited greatly from the three years’, and overall, that was the general feeling.

There were plenty of other things to do besides academic work. Rowena Patterson (Dr MacKean) considers that her time at Somerville was ‘more growing up and learning about life than about Classics, I’m afraid’. Naomi Shepherd was the first woman to be Features Editor of Isis, ‘doing investigative journalism about student politics and food (expletives deleted).’ Maureen Oliver admits that ‘the river took too much of my time, both coxing the women’s eight and punting’. We remember the music, and the choirs we joined. Several of us were involved in student politics. Then there was religion. Margaret Trowell (died 2005; read PPE) became a Catholic and spent fifteen years in an enclosed order of nuns. Rosemary Storr (Mrs Green; read Mathematics) had a profound religious experience soon after arriving in Oxford, married a minister in the Church of England, and has spent her life, in addition to raising a family, in working for the church. I discovered the Quakers and have been involved with them ever since. Kate Tristram (read History) became one of the first women to be ordained into the Anglican church. But above all, we remember the conversations, and making friendships that have lasted a lifetime.

To Naomi Shepherd, ‘The University seemed very much a male preserve’. Daphne Wall had tutorials with a don at St John’s College, and, ‘At the end of my sessions with him, he looked at me thoughtfully, and told me I had a brain like a man. I took this as the compliment it was supposed to be!’ Male dominance restricted our choice of careers, and, for most, all the careers advisory service could offer was teaching, social work, secretarial work and the like. Pauline Wickham (read English) wanted to work at the BBC, but ‘there was no recruitment programme at this time for women producers’. The civil service was a possibility, but women had to resign on marriage; this affected Ann Geale (Mrs Diamond; died 2020; read Chemistry) who was accepted for the Factory Inspectorate but had to leave after a year. The only one of us who made the move, now commonplace, into finance was Beryl Reid Davies (Lady Mustill; died 2012; read English).

Some degrees led to a professional qualification, notably in medicine. Bridget Davies and Elizabeth Hunter (Dr McLean) both became consultants in psychiatry, and Rosemary Troughton (Dr Millard; died 2019) was a medical researcher. For Hilda Robinson (Mrs Cole), PPE led to a career as a statistician. Several of us, as would be expected of Somervillians, had distinguished academic careers; Marie Thomas, who retired as Professor and Head of Department of French Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, is the survivor of these. There are fiction authors Daphne Wall and Naomi Shepherd, and published Gillian Dickinson (read History and died in 2002) and Pauline Wickham. Shirley Summerskill qualified as a doctor, became a Labour MP, and was a junior minister under Harold Wilson. Renate Steinert was Director of London Marriage Guidance. Henrietta Lamb (Mrs Phipps; died 2016; read History) gained an entry in Wikipedia for her work as a landscape gardener. Many of us were schoolteachers, full- or part-time, often for its convenience for a married woman with children. Several of us married early to men we had met at Oxford, most of us had children, most remained married to the same person, though the majority of those who remain are widowed.

I asked responders to comment on their activities since the previous report. There were new travel opportunities. Music was often mentioned. Jill Todd (Mrs Hayward; read Mathematics) ‘sang with the same choir in Harrow for forty-nine years’. For fifteen years José Cummins joined Maureen Oliver and her husband for the London Mozart Players’ Eastbourne weekend. Elizabeth Hunter took an Open University course in music and started a U3A madrigal group, also playing chamber music, until deteriorating health limited her activities. Several others mentioned the U3A, and Rowena Patterson pursued her interest in the Tasmanian U3A to the extent of a PhD at the age of 86. Jane Sheldon (Mrs Peters; read Chemistry) became a tourist guide, an occupation she was able to continue into her eighties. Naomi Shepherd wrote, ‘I’ve gone back to my early love of short stories. I’ve only published one collection but have another in hand, and some have appeared in magazines.’ Daphne Wall took up painting, and has written her memoir and a collection of short stories. We enjoy our gardens, and Hilda Robinson noted that ‘My dog keeps me fit’. I myself continued to research the history of early Quakerism, though restricted by the need to care for my husband. Several of us mentioned caring responsibilities.

I included a question as to how we were coping with Covid. Naomi Shepherd was one who found the protracted lockdown difficult: ‘At this stage, over a year on, I have to admit that it has taken a serious toll. We Somerville graduates should have the intellectual resilience to combat Covid accidie, but that “should” now sounds rather empty and arrogant’. But most of us have weathered Covid well, with family, friends and neighbours to lend a hand. Jenny Hugh-Jones reported, ‘Shutdown in New Zealand was short. I live in a Retirement Village for the Actively Retired so we actively shut down, ordering groceries online, with coffee parties in the road and lending each other books.’ Bridget Davies wrote that her garden and Zoom made lockdown ‘shamefully easy’, which is also my experience. Daphne Wall wrote, ‘In some ways I think our generation has been able to cope better than our children and grandchildren – after all, we were the war babies and knew about ration books and the importance of making our sweet ration last the week!’

So, seventy years on, a fair number of us are still enjoying life. Good Somerville brains are still active despite Covid and the physical limitations that come with old age.

DR ROSEMARY MOORE (née Filmer, 1950, PPE)

In last year’s College Report we included a report on the year of 1952. If anyone would like to undertake a report on another year from the 1950s decade, please contact Liz Cooke (elizabeth.cooke@some.ox.ac.uk)

If you have a news item which you would like to appear in the next College Report, please send in your contribution before 31 July 2022

1951

Jenifer Weston (Mrs Wates) held an exhibition of her paintings, responding to the experience of the Coronavirus pandemic, at the Museum of Oxfordshire in Woodstock in July this year: Corona – Exploring love and loss in a time of pandemic.

1952

Anne Fawcett (Mrs Kirkman) has filled second lockdown with Zoom classes from the Cambridge U3A group (the largest in the country) and found them enjoyable and instructive. ‘I have been contributing to a poetry writing group, which I originally took up because the Welsh Language class was full. I had never really written poetry, although I did produce a sonnet for the Somerville Entrance general paper in 1951. My other long-term class is called Flights of Fantasy and is a reading group for various SF and fantasy novels, especially the work of Terry Pratchett. This last term I’ve also joined a Literature Quiz group, hard going but fun.’

1958

Elspeth Langlands (Elspeth Barker) won four awards for her novel O Caledonia and it was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize when it was first published 20 years ago. It is due to be re-published in October this year. It was recently read by the Somerville London Book Club with the greatest enthusiasm.

1964

Margaret Beckham (Dr Cone) has for 36 years been engaged in writing A Dictionary of Pali for the Pali Text Society. Part III was published in 2019, following Part I, published in 2001, and Part II, published in 2010. Alison Skilbeck writes ‘We are aware how lucky our generation is, and feel for all students, and indeed the middleaged with children and older parents. My husband Tim was ill at the start, but was able to stay at home, and made a full recovery. I have kept busy: for RADA on Zoom I have taught some challenging Communications Skills sessions, and a more manageable course on The Winter’s Tale, with students as far apart as New York and Russia. For Radio 4 I was in Christie’s drama The Lie, and also read all the quotations on the latest series of Quote Unquote. I’ve performed short monologues on Zoom – one as Dame Janet Vaughan – and written two more one-woman shows. We have just performed – live! – our Chosen Words to raise money for the Swallow Theatre in Scotland; also at Shipwright’s House in London.’

Sue Watson (Mrs Griffin) and Jill Barnes (Mrs Hamblin) and Mary Keegan (Mrs Keen) have been active year reps for 1964. As Sue Griffin reports: ‘The year reps for 1964 set up a meeting on Zoom in April. Nineteen of us located in India, the US, Spain and Switzerland, as well as across the UK, had a convivial hour and a half, talking in a relaxed way about our Somerville memories and our lives now. We started with each person recounting briefly something good that had happened for them over the last year and conversation flowed from that, including some time spent in “break out” groups. Emails received afterwards showed satisfied customers, keen for a repeat before too long.’

1965

Susanna Pressel was re-elected in May to both Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council and this year she is vice-chair of the County Council. ‘For the first time ever the County Council is not run by the Conservatives. Instead, an Alliance of LibDems, Labour and Greens is in charge for the next four years (at least).’

1966

Elizabeth (Liz) Masters (Mrs Shaw) writes ‘I’m delighted that my third historical novel has recently been published. Had we never loved so blindly like my other books is set on the Isle of Skye although this time I have moved forward in time. It is set during the Second World War although the action moves to the Mediterranean convoys and Bletchley Park. The story is told alternately by John Norman, a fisherman’s son who joins the Merchant Navy, and Felicity, the daughter of a retired tea planter. It’s available online at Blackwell’s (I’m especially pleased at that!), Waterstones, WH Smiths, Amazon and uk.bookshop.org/shop/ CarminaGadelica.’

1967

Edwina Brown, who is a Consultant Nephrologist at the Hammersmith Hospital, and Honorary Professor of Renal Medicine, Imperial College, writes in November 2020: ‘I am now President Elect for the International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis (will be President 2022-4) and, given that we can’t travel to low-income countries to educate and support colleagues, I am starting a webinar programme with lower-income countries who are wanting to grow peritoneal dialysis – this is cheaper than haemodialysis and therefore can enable more people with advanced kidney disease to get the treatment they need. The first webinar will be in a couple of weeks with Pakistan to build on an education programme I contributed to on a visit this time last year.’

1968

Rosalind (Ros) Carne has had two novels published during the last year: The Pupil (2020) and The Stepmother (2021). Both were published by Canelo Books. ‘I came up to Somerville to read English in 1968 so I am definitely a late