My grandmother Anne Corden, who has died aged 106, grew up in Cambridge and London but spent a fair chunk of her adult life abroad, where she supported her husband George’s work as a commander of RAF bases, not only bringing up her own family but taking on the pastoral role of providing support to service people.
Born during the first world war in Hoo, Kent, Anne was the eldest of the four children of Kathleen (nee Wilson), a housewife, and her husband, Hamilton Hartridge, a lecturer in physiology at King’s College, Cambridge. After attending Queen’s College school in London, her first job was in the dressmaking department at the Liberty department store, where, on one occasion, she ended up measuring the Queen of Romania, since she was one of the few people who knew how to correctly address and curtsy to royalty.
