Ambassadors’ wives are not supposed to get too passionate or partisan about the countries in which their husbands serve. If a revolution breaks out, they are supposed to keep their heads down, maintain the morale of the staff and make sure the flag is still flying.

Jill Braithwaite, who died in November, was not that sort of ambassador’s wife. On August 20 1991, when the streets of Moscow were in chaos after a KGB-led coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, she was on the barricades around the White House, where Boris Yeltsin was refusing to surrender. With Russian friends who lived nearby, she served bread and soup to chilly demonstrators.