Lady Cicely Mayhew, first woman to join the British diplomatic service, this year

Cicely Mayhew, the first woman to join the British diplomatic service, lives in a handsome cottage near Blenheim Palace, on a street that once served as a set for “Miss Marple”. Now well into her eighties, her memory is not what it was. But she still recites long passages of Shakespeare, chants marching songs from Tito’s Yugoslavia and enjoys a pot of vanilla ice-cream most days to make up for wartime rationing.

She is remarkably matter-of-fact about having blazed a trail for women by becoming the King’s first female emissary in 1947. “My attitude was, about time too!” she says. Mayhew had already come up against the barriers that ambitious working women faced – during her wartime service at Bletchley Park, where the codes that protected German communications were cracked, she received lower pay and ranked beneath men who could not boast a first from Oxford. By comparison with that, the diplomatic service was a step forward, albeit a touch patronising. “Our new lamb, that’s what they called me,” Mayhew recalls. “They were all very kind, very courteous.”