Stella Cunliffe has died at the age of 95.
I think I first heard her name in the early 1970s when she was called back from holiday in Jamaica to appear on The World at One to answer claims (from a detective inspector) that the murder rate had risen since the abolition of hanging. No email, internet or Twitter in those days – not even very reliable phone lines a lot of the time – you had to be there.
Our paths did not cross very often though I saw her at meetings & she was a member of the board which interviewed me for a job in the 1980s.
The Times obituarist says that her no-nonsense manner could be unsettling, but I found her kind as well as a support & inspiration. We owe her a debt of gratitude for the drive & determination which helped pave the way for other women to follow her into the higher reaches of the civil service.
She lived a very full life. Although I had heard her speak of working at Guinness I never heard her mention the experience of being one of the first into Belsen at all.
The last time I saw her was, by coincidence, on Stockport station where she was catching the same train to London as someone who had been our house guest.
