“I’d wanted to do medicine right from the time I came to The Tiffin Girls’ School. This was partly thanks to our family GP who was somebody called Dr Swann (the father of Donald Swann, one half of comedy and musical duo Flanders & Swann). He had escaped at the end of the Russian revolution from St Petersburg and had to semi retrain at St Mary’s and after working in the East End eventually he came to Richmond.

“He was a very good doctor and I respected him. Then I was good at biology and sciences and maths at school so, you know, it was a no brainer really. I can remember being taught about the formation of a blood clot in biology in the 2nd form and being so interested I went to the Richmond library to read more about it in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

“Some things that stand out about Tiffin Girls’. There was a wonderful classics mistress called Miss Wallis who taught us English as well. She was our form mistress in the fourth form and she was amazing. And we had a wonderful history mistress called Mrs Berryman was very, very left wing and that was good. We had penfriends for French and we did a French exchange. I went to Lille and became very good friends with my pen friend. I am still in touch with her daughter.

“Some things that stand out about Tiffin Girls’. There was a wonderful classics mistress called Miss Wallis who taught us English as well. She was our form mistress in the fourth form and she was amazing. And we had a wonderful history mistress called Mrs Berryman was very, very left wing and that was good. We had penfriends for French and we did a French exchange. I went to Lille and became very good friends with my pen friend. I am still in touch with her daughter.

“I enjoyed sport and was in the hockey team. I loved it but had to give it up in the sixth form. I was doing four A levels and it was just too much. I was tired. Our headteacher, Miss Orford, was not impressed and thought I was letting the school down. I later discovered I was very anaemic which explained why I was so tired and another reason why I find haematology so interesting.

“I was Head Girl, but in those days far fewer girls stayed on in the sixth form or went to university. There were three sixth forms: six arts, six general and six science. Six science was very small, I think there were about eight people in it. The idea was that you became a nurse, a secretary or a teacher.

“I left Tiffin Girls’ in 1961 and went to Somerville College in Oxford in October 1962 initially to read biochemistry but I changed subjects to medicine at the end of the first year. Before that, I had a friend at the Royal Postgraduate Hammersmith Hospital and so I wrote to them and asked them for a job and went to work in the haematology lab there for 8 months. It was fantastic training and I earned £10 a week!”

In 1969, I qualified from Oxford Medical School at the old Radcliffe Infirmary (where she was awarded First Class Honours and was the first female scholar of the Oxford University Medical School).

“My first house job was at the Hammersmith doing renal medicine which was interesting and then I went on to do a number of different medical jobs in London as well as training as a GP for a year at an estate in Wembley.

“I think there was definitely sexism in medicine at that time. For example, I had thought at one stage that I might want to be a surgeon but there was only one female surgeon working in the Radcliffe Infirmary and I was told it was no job for a woman. When I was a medical student, people would assume I was a nurse and the sister-in-charge of the wards would make your life very difficult. On the other hand, because there were so few women in medicine, it was easier to shine because you stood out.

“I met my husband at the Brompton Hospital and we had two children. I was lucky that there was a scheme which would allow part-time working. My professional life culminated as a consultant haematologist and director of the Royal Free Haemophilia Centre from 1987-2005. Although I was an NHS clinician providing a clinical service I was involved in clinical research and directed 18 postgraduate doctors for MD and PhD degrees. I retired as a consultant haematologist in 2005 and although I continued academically I retired from medicine completely in 2013. I founded the peer review journal Haemophilia, now in the 30th year of publication.

“My areas of expertise were in transfusion transmitted disease, particularly HIV and HCV, and women with inherited bleeding disorders. During the last five years I have responded to criticism from the infected blood inquiry and I was interrogated by a QC in October 2020. The Infected Blood Inquiry’s final report will be published on 20 May 2024.

"I found great inspiration at the medics conference hosted by Tiffin girls, listening to fellow alumnae share their career journeys. The outlook for medicine is promising, especially with the potential of Artificial Intelligence to enhance disease detection and aid in finding cures.”