It being Mother’s Day, I have inevitably been thinking of mine, who died nine years ago, aged 96.
After she died, I wrote a short obituary of her for the Guardian, based on what turned out to be inaccurate recollections of her life. In fact, when I was sent the short obit. which appeared in the Girton Annual Review 2010 (her college), I discovered that she had gone to university late, aged 23, which I had never known and read, not Arabic, which was a myth, nor Chinese, as she had apparently tried to change to because her then boyfriend was working for Jardine Matheson in Hong Kong, but Part 1 Modern and Medieval Languages and Part 2 Archaeology and Anthropology.
The obit. says diplomatically that ‘one of her prime interests was sport and she played hockey for the University Women’s Combined XI and for Cambridgeshire County, in addition to tennis for the University and lacrosse for Girton’.
Here she is on the ski slopes in, I guess, 1936:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
What a strong beautiful woman and a great photo.
Yes, I hadn’t paid attention to the photo before. Very sportif. Charles