Obituaries | 47
Hilda Jean Harvey (Thompson, 1946)
Jean Harvey (centre front) with the Oxford University Tennis Team
Jean was born in 1925. She was the daughter of Dr Ashley Thompson, an alumnus of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Muriel Thompson. Her father had served in the Great War in the RAMC, was mentioned in despatches, and after a spell in the Punjab later became Medical Officer of Health in Lambeth, South London. On her mother’s side, Jean was distantly related to the artist John Callcott Horsley RA, who painted the first Christmas card. She was the third of four children, her elder brother being the well-known zoologist, Professor John Cloudsley-Thompson. At St Paul’s Girls’ School she was a Foundation Scholar and became Head Girl. In 1944 – on her last day at school – her home was destroyed by a flying bomb, but her family all mercifully survived. She joined the WRNS and became a small part of the then secret world of Bletchley Park for the last few months of the Second World War. She and her messmates maintained the Colossus computer in working order, a seemingly mundane mechanical task. Almost the only hint they had of the importance of their task was the strict injunction, to which they all faithfully adhered, to keep strict silence about their work – until decades later, when it became public knowledge, and they were sought out by producers of television documentaries.
In 1946 Jean came up to Somerville to read English. She had the opportunity of attending lectures by both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, and her tutor was the formidable Mary Lascelles, with whom she stayed in touch throughout their joint lives. She took up rockclimbing, and headed the University Ladies’ Tennis Team (see photograph, Jean is front centre). After graduation she worked for a time in London, with a brief spell in the Philippines with Shell. She then started work at the Old Schools in Cambridge, where she met and married (1957) Laurence Marshall Harvey, of St Catharine’s College, who rose to become Deputy Secretary-General of the Faculties. For some years she was content to be a housewife and mother, but later she took up tennis again, and continued to play well into her seventies. She was involved in charity work for the blind as Editor for many years of Cambridge Talking News, and in the affairs of Grantchester Parish Church. She was an active member of the Wrens’ Association, the Jane Austen Society, and the University of the Third Age. She died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital on 18 August 2015. She is survived by her husband and two sons. PETER HARVEY