Katherine (Katy) Barratt (1970) After qualifying as a doctor and a short time in hospital work, she moved back to Oxford to have their children – Charles, James, Jill and Kate – and for Chiz to be a GP on Walton Street. After graduating from Somerville As the children grew, Maggie supported Chiz in the running of with a degree in Mathematics, the practice, and returned to medicine after a 20-year break Katy took an MSc in Statistics at to work in family planning. She took a Diploma in Venereology Cambridge and started her lifelong and worked as a sexual health doctor, and her children note career as a Civil Service Statistician. that ‘conversations round the family dinner table were not the She began in the Home Office and usual ones but more interesting than most’! was promoted through various Departments in London. She After retirement, she and Chiz had a great time travelling, continued her statistical work in visiting India, Kashmir, China and Botswana, and spending two the Scottish Office, having moved summers travelling around Europe in a camper van. A charmer to Edinburgh to be with her KATHERINE BARRATT and full of life, Maggie had a life-long interest in fashion and partner George. was always a Vogue reader. She also always looked on the There, they were both active within the Scottish Labour Party bright side, was interested and interesting, and her talent for for many years. They later married to enable her to join him conversation made everyone she talked to feel special. on a two-year secondment in Paris. Sadly, the marriage ended after a few years but she was happily settled in Edinburgh New Town and remained there. Julia (Jo) Barstow (née Dunn, 1955) She never wanted children but had a passion for reading a variety of fiction, and would spend hours a day doing so. Jo’s passion for languages began as She also had a keen interest in Archaeology and travelled to a teenager. Born in Solihull as one of many countries to look at ruins and read by a pool. She was four children, she travelled to learn very generous and hospitable with friends and family but more: working as a nanny in France, Covid and lockdown made her anxious and, consequently, Spain and Portugal and opening uncharacteristically reclusive. She died on August 20th 2023 up doors to friendships that lasted shortly after a very late diagnosis of bowel cancer. all her life. She read Modern Languages, and went on after that Margaret (Maggie) Barrett to gain a PhD in Medieval French Literature from the University of JULIA BARSTOW (née Bacon, 1946) Pennsylvania. At Penn, Jo taught French and met her husband, Allan, before Being an only child can lead to a they moved to Storrs, Connecticut, built their own log home weight of parental expectation, and raised three children. Initially teaching French and Spanish but luckily for Maggie, born in at Central Connecticut State University, she then became the Workington on the edge of the administrator and ‘Mama Grande’ of their Center for Latin Lake District, she grew up bright American and Caribbean Studies, where she was treasured for and good at just about everything. her masterful organizational and budgeting skills, and her care Her father worked through what of many generations of students, faculty, and staff. She also became British Steel, from tea-boy operated her own home bakery ‘Mrs. Barstow’s Bakery’, and to Company Secretary, so he could became well known for her delicious French bread! send his daughter to Harrogate Ladies' College, and she came MARGARET BARRETT Jo followed the UConn Women’s Basketball team, played from there to Somerville to read various instruments in several early music groups, sang in Medicine: one of only ten women on the course at the time. the Renaissance Revival, and was a founding and sustaining She was an extremely good swimmer and later went on to get member of ‘The Sewing Circle’. She sewed many of her own a swimming Blue at Oxford. As she waited to be interviewed by clothes as well as both her daughters’ wedding dresses, fed the Dorothy Hodgkin, she met her lifelong friend, Dottie, and many family from her large vegetable garden, raised chickens, ducks, of her memories of her time at Somerville involved smoking, goats, and more. She continued studying languages, including parties and romance. She met another medical student, Russian into her 80s, even as dementia began to affect her. William (Chiz) Barrett of New College, ‘over a cadaver’ as Jo loved being a good friend, opening her home to guests he chivalrously passed down a microscope for her, and an from near and far, and helping people make connections with important factor in his attraction seemed to be that he had a each other. radiogram in his room, where they played swing, Rachmaninov and Elgar (favourites for their whole lives). She remembered romantic times – the New College Summer Ball, punting down the Cherwell in the dawn light, drinking champagne – and they married when she was only 22. 37