My family had been distributed over a part of north of East Anglia from the early times mainly farming. And my father-in-law, who was an historian, who said he had come across a Danish Viking called Crowfoot, or nicknamed Crowfoot, whom he thought must have been the origin of our distribution.

[Q] Right.

But when my father and mother had three children, they thought it, they wouldn't want all the time to bring them up in Sudan; they would bring them up in their own homeland, and my father said, as he was in the education business and had to devise courses for children, he thought they should go to the schools at Beccles countryside, which was then Sir John Leman School, a small country... I don't think it was classified as a grammar school, because it didn't in fact do Latin and Greek or anything like that, but it did introduce chemistry. It should have taught two science subjects, but a cut occurred just as I went there. We only had one term of physics before we lost physics for our whole, our whole world... but we had very good chemistry from our one science teacher, Christine Deeley.

[Q] Did that science teacher have an influence, presumably?

She had a great influence, especially on, on girls, because, in school, the general plan was that, was that the girls would all study domestic science and physiology, while the boys were studying pure science and chemistry. But if a girl was going to a university, or hoped to go to a university, she could do chemistry, and I think that I know several girls who were persuaded by Christine Deeley to do chemistry.

[Q] Take that course?

Yes. My year, there were two of us who did chemistry with the boys, and one other girl who was very good, Norah Putey, and myself, and we, we enjoyed ourselves well enough.