My mother, Anna Gillett, who has died aged 88, was a staunch feminist invested in life-long education. She worked at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg for 24 years on language learning and social policy.
Her firm beliefs in equality and the importance of education found outlets in her various positions at the organisation from the mid-1970s, as she worked on programmes focusing on language provision for migrants and language learning in schools. These led to her sitting in on classes in schools all over Europe and coordinating meetings with experts on the subject. She eventually headed the Council of Europe’s social policy steering committee (1985-99), which was concerned with social exclusion, family affairs, elderly people and children across Europe.
Born in Rugby, Warwickshire, to Diana Lamb, a farmer-turned-broadcaster and education campaigner, and Tona Gillett, an electrical engineer, Anna attended a range of schools, including the Quaker Wennington school in Lancaster, and Millfield school in Somerset. She gained an English degree from Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1959, and the following year married Neville Maryan Green, a lawyer, whom she had met at university.
After Neville was appointed to the European court of human rights, they moved to Strasbourg, and Anna worked as a kindergarten teacher in a Steiner/Waldorf school while raising my sister, Vicky, and me. She and Neville divorced in 1975, and Anna found work at the Council of Europe on an adult language learning programme for migrants. After two years she became responsible for a school programme within the organisation’s modern languages project. In 1985 her role changed to social policy.
Retirement in 1999 allowed my mother to dedicate time to her family, moving back to England to live with Vicky, in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, and visiting me in Greece, but her educational drive never stopped. Over a period of six years, she completed a BA and MA in ancient classical civilisation with the Open University, as well as studying Sanskrit at Soas University of London in her late 70s.
Her leisure time was spent playing the piano, gardening, reading, crossword-solving and knitting. She was endlessly curious and surrounded herself with books on all subjects, and dinner conversations would frequently be interrupted by her going to check a fact in her library of books. She came from a staunchly liberal Quaker family and was an avid Guardian reader, impressing her grandchildren with her progressive views, as well as fostering in them a love of literature, art and politics.
She is survived by Vicky and me, as well as six grandchildren, Oscar, Marianna, Jack, Andreas, Melpo and Lara, and her siblings Jan, Tim, Harriet and Robert. A brother, Charlie, died in 2010.
