My friend Susan Fenn, who has died aged 84, will never be forgotten by those who knew her for her vitality and love of adventure.
Born in China, the daughter of Christian medical missionaries who founded a leprosy hospital, she was barely out of infancy when she was sent to live with an American family for four years during the second world war.
Her parents, Edith (nee Willey) and the Rev George Russell, feared for the safety of Sue and her brother, Martin. This exile must surely have helped develop Sue’s remarkable individuality. She presented all her life as an English rose, but she was supported by Scottish roots that made her determined and durable, and spiky only on the rarest occasions.
At St Andrews University she studied biochemistry. In 1959 she gave up a promising career in cancer research to marry Nicholas Fenn, a talented recruit to the diplomatic service. After a year learning Burmese at Soas University of London, the couple began a career which took them first to Burma (Myanmar) and on to Algeria, China and New York, then UK ambassadorships in Ireland and back in Burma, and finally, in 1991, with Nick now knighted, to the British high commission in New Delhi.
Sue proved her mettle in Rangoon, the Burmese capital, in 1962: she had newly given birth to her first child, Rob, when the nursing home was suddenly occupied by armed soldiers, part of the coup that gave Burma its military government. With Nick away, Sue won the soldiers over by showing them her new baby, and they left cooing.
In New York, confronted in the street by a desperate young woman holding a revolver, Sue took her home, fed her and gave her money, but always regretted never having asked whether the gun was loaded. In Dublin, she learned Irish and successfully passed public examinations, determined as she was to make her own contribution to the peace process.
It was while living in Dublin that she decided to visit her elder son in Lagos, Nigeria, where he was on the staff of the British high commission. The visit was made, not by plane, but both ways by Land Rover, including a double Sahara crossing.
Sue was a wonderful hostess, whether to old friends or to the numerous politicians and officials who trooped through the embassies. In Kentish retirement, she was a pillar of the church in the village of Marden and of local dramatics. Only once was she lured away, to cross the Andes on foot to raise funds for charity, her last major adventure.
Nick died in 2016. Sue is survived by their children, Rob (now deputy ambassador to Indonesia), Charlie and Julia, by 10 grandchildren, and Martin.
