5. Fitting It All In

This chapter draws on Mary’s own published and unpublished recollections as well as those of her children and her friends and an extended interview in The Compleat Woman: Marriage, Motherhood, Career. Can She Have It All? (1988) by Valerie Grove. She managed to work full-time while bringing up five children, born between 1950 and 1961. Her philosophy of child-rearing is described, and an account is given of each of her five children during their childhoods and subsequently. She had a very close relationship with Geoffrey, rich with mutual interests, both professional and recreational. Drawing on an illuminating interview with Ann Strawson a few days after her 100th birthday, her friendships with families of colleagues, especially Peter and Ann Strawson and Marcus and Cecilia Dick, are described. There were crowded holidays in a family holiday house on the North Yorkshire Coast. Mary had extra-marital friendships and possibly more intimate relationships with male colleagues. She had an affectionate relationship with Duncan, her much older brother and her role model in childhood. Later, as Sir Duncan Wilson, he was Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. She visited him in Moscow during a festival of British music that he had arranged.