An Interesting and Varied Career

I started my secretarial career in 1961 after a disastrous attempt to take up nursing. After a year's secretarial training at St James's College in London, I found a job as Assistant Secretary to the Managing Director of The De La Rue Company, who in those days were more famous for playing cards than anything else, but their main business was printing banknotes, and at that time they also had Formica and Potterton boilers, among other things, under their belt.

I had four fascinating years working as Assistant Secretary to Mr Gerry Norman [now Sir Arthur Norman], where I learnt how to run an exceptionally busy international office, and in those days we did not have the help of modern telephones and copying machines.

In February 1965 I was approached by Peter Orchard, the Managing Director of the banknote printing division of De La Rue, who asked if I would like to work for him, which I accepted. From then on I worked alongside Peter as he progressed up the De La Rue tree to become Chief Executive in 1977 and Chairman in 1987. As well being Peter Orchard’s Personal Assistant, I was also De La Rue's Social Secretary and the Secretary of their Charitable Trust, and I therefore had a wonderfully interesting and sociable job, often travelling the world to organise functions for the company.

Sadly Peter died very suddenly in office in January 1993 and after 32 years with De La Rue the time came to move on. In November 1993 I joined the Foreign Office where I worked for Douglas Hurd as his Assistant Private Secretary, otherwise called the Diary Secretary. When Douglas retired Malcolm Rifkind became Foreign Secretary and I stayed on and worked for him until May 1997. They were four fascinating years which I thoroughly enjoyed even if it was very hard work.

I did not stay long after Robin Cook became Foreign Secretary, and eventually decided to retire. Now I travel the world during the winter months and do a few small part-time jobs when I am in England during the summer months. This also enables me to enjoy some cricket during the English summer!