Vanessa Winchester
Born in London, just pre-war. At school, she particularly enjoyed art and later was employed by the director of the British School at Rome as his archaeological surveyor. Returning to England, she married and raised two children. When they reached secondary school-age she decided she also needed to be educated so became a student at Oxford Polytechnic. From there she progressed to take a doctorate in the Geography Department, University of Oxford, studying rates of change in landscapes using lichens and trees as indicators. Research took her world-wide, starting on Patagonian glaciers and now helping forest restoration in southern Madagascar.