MAEVE FORT: MAEVE FORT was a graduate of Trinity College Dublin who went on to become the British ambassador to some of the most dangerous countries in the world. From 1989, she was ambassador to Mozambique where she was engaged in endeavouring to negotiate a ceasefire in their civil war. "The real job of a diplomat is to stop war," she once said.
In 1992, she volunteered to serve in Lebanon, where she was ambassador during an extremely dangerous period.
Maeve Fort, who was always elegant and beautifully dressed, came to a shattered city where she had to live behind barbwire barricades and travel in a convoy of armoured Range Rovers (though this did not stop her travelling with the sunroof of her car open).
She always had a protection team of six men with her, which included Christian and Muslim Lebanese guards. They held her in the greatest affection and admiration - one of her Muslim guards proudly named his baby daughter Maeve.
"My boys," she called them, but said during a break in England. "Oh the bliss of being able to walk into Marks and Spencer without being followed."
She had a great affection for Lebanon and its people especially the locals she met when walking in the hills with her dog and her bodyguards! In spite of the hardships, she as always enjoyed herself and took pleasure in being entertained by the Lebanese in Beirut, often with champagne.
She ended her career as high commissioner in South Africa where she worked closely with president Nelson Mandela, who became a friend. When she retired in 2000, she was Britain's highest ranking woman diplomat.
Maeve Geraldine Fort was the daughter of a hospital administrator in Liverpool and attended Nantwich Grammar School before coming to Trinity where she read English and French.
Though she was renowned for unpunctuality and seldom managed to make a 9 o'clock class, she took a good degree and won a scholarship to the Sorbonne.
Determined to travel, she applied to join the British foreign office and though there was strong competition, she was one of the two women from the dozen entrants to be selected as a junior officer. She served in many different countries including Nigeria, Chile, New York and was also ambassador to Chad, a non-residential posting. "One of the advantages of a peripatetic existence is that if you get bogged down in a relationship, you have the excuse that you must move every three years." She was, for a time, head of the West African Department where she gained a reputation for being forceful and forthright.
She had a great knowledge of Africa and though a patient and sensitive negotiator, she would not take no for an answer.
It was in South Africa that her residence was accidentally burned by some builders who set the thatched roof on fire with a blowlamp. She lost all her personal possessions, even the platinum and gold settings of her jewellery that were in a safe, melted leaving only the stones.
After her retirement, she was a trustee of the Beit Trust and of the British Red Cross.
Among the honours she received were two that carried the title Dame and therefore she was a double dame. She never married.
Dame Maeve Geraldine Fort: born November 19th, 1940; died September 18th, 2008