Anne Russell - obituary - Telegraph She was educated at St Ethelburga's, a Roman Catholic boarding school near York, where the teachers, she said, "were stout women in black tights who played cricket." After the war in North-West Europe, Anne Russell was demobilised; but many of the close friends she had made while serving in France were being sent to French Indo-China, and she persuaded her CO to let her sign up as a volunteer. One of a handful of women on the troopship bound for Saigon, she suffered badly from seasickness on the month-long voyage. At Colombo, she and a girlfriend sneaked into the town in defiance of orders not to go ashore. As punishment they were confined to their cabin - but after protests from men on board who had been taken to safety in their ambulances this sanction was lifted. Anne came to believe that the war in French Indo-China was not an honourable conflict and became demoralised. After a ruling that women were no longer permitted to drive ambulances, she was recruited to the Deuxième Bureau. One of her tasks was giving English lessons to the girlfriend of a rebel leader in the hope that she might glean information about his whereabouts. She learned nothing about the rebel but found herself being given "Free Indo-China" pamphlets. These were subsequently discovered in the back of her Jeep and she had an uncomfortable time explaining this to the French authorities. She returned to England but found it hard to settle and worked as a freelance writer for a number of publications before finding more stable employment with the Evening Standard. Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton were among those she interviewed. She became assistant editor of the National Coal Board's magazine Coal and, for a spell, headed up the Board's film section. After her marriage in 1954 to Martin Russell, a banker, she lived with him in London, where they were entertaining and generous hosts. Anne Russell had an adventurous sense of taste and combined her husband's large collection of Ceylonese paintings, Persian carpets and Buddha statues with more classical Russell family busts, traditional English furniture and book collections. In the 1980s they moved to a cottage in Dorset, where she continued to live after her husband's death until a fall in 2010 brought an end to her cherished independence. As well as her husband, one of Anne Russell's sons predeceased her. She is survived by a son and two daughters. Anne Russell, born June 13 1923, died November 25 2013