My cousin Mary Wane, who has died aged 99, had a protracted profession with the British Council from the top of the second world battle onwards, selling British tradition to different components of Europe.
She started her work on the council in 1945 with a posting to Austria as an interpreter for the occupying Allied Forces. After coming back from Vienna in 1947, she was based mostly in London with the British Council, however travelled extensively for the organisation in Europe, selling academic hyperlinks and exchanges with different European international locations, together with the Soviet Union, and organising exhibitions of the work of British artists similar to Henry Moore and David Hockney.
By 1968 she was working for the council in Oslo, and from 1972 to 1979 she was its cultural attache in Paris. Made OBE in 1977, her last posting was again in Oslo, as director (1979 -84), earlier than she retired to Cumbria, the place she contributed to the humanities and political lifetime of the Lake District.
Born in Manchester, Mary was the daughter of Charlotte (nee Kennedy) and Norman Wane, an accountant. She went to Blackburne Home college for ladies in Liverpool, to the place the household had moved, and gained a level in fashionable languages at Liverpool College.
She spent a brief interval as a junior civil servant in 1945 earlier than becoming a member of the British Council. Her early years there have been a number of the happiest of her life – not simply professionally however socially, as she sang with the Chelsea Opera Group, which she later helped to run.
For a few years Mary was additionally an energetic member of the Labour celebration, however by 1981 she had joined the newly shaped SDP. In retirement she labored onerous for the Liberal Democrats. Residing within the small city of Windermere, she served as a LibDem councillor for Cumbria county council till 1997, and was identified for establishing sturdy cross-party hyperlinks.
She additionally carried out analysis on Cumbrian issues for The Victoria Historical past of the Counties of England challenge, and was a founder patron and committee member of the Lake District Summer time Music pageant, remaining a robust pressure in its organisation effectively into her 90s.
She is survived by her nephew, Tim, niece, Mary, and eight cousins.
