Philanthropist Stephanie Shirley: 'You can only spend so much Dame Stephanie (she was honoured in 2000) is the president and founder of Autistica, a charity that raises funds for medical research, and has also set up Prior's Court School, an independent special school for students with autism. Most of her other donations go to IT projects in the voluntary sector. Gordon Brown made her an Ambassador for Philanthropy in 2009, and though the position was not renewed by the Coalition, she still travels the world, talking about the value of giving. In her new book, she describes how she found hope in the blackest moments of despair, how she refused to be cowed by sexism in the workplace and how a successful business can also be morally sound. We meet at the flat in a gated estate in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, that she shares with her husband Derek Shirley, a former physicist. It is an ultra-modern home with stunning paintings, pottery and furniture. "Everyone else on the estate has pseudo-Victorian stuff," she chuckles. But I love contemporary pieces. She was born in Dortmund, Germany, in 1933, the younger of two girls. Her Jewish father was a respected judge until stripped of his position by the Nazis. Her mother was Christian. Although Stephanie and her late sister, Renate, then aged nine, were fostered by a Christian couple in Britain, she suffered from insecurity and had Jungian therapy for six years. Both her parents survived the war, but neither subsequently wanted much to do with her. My father remarried and had another family. I only heard of his death a year after it happened. My mother was always critical of me. The result of the rejection by both parents, but particularly my mother, has driven me to excellence in whatever I do. It is my way of showing her that I can do it. Stephanie displayed an aptitude for science but life was not easy for a working woman in the Fifties. She began at the Post Office, but quickly realised that the glass ceiling was far too low. So, at a time when computers were half the size of a room, she started her own software company, later rebranded as Xansa. She almost exclusively employed women, and her flexible, home-based, job-sharing approach was revolutionary. "My company offered opportunities to the kind of women male-dominated companies considered unemployable," she says. I am not a feminist but I have always fought for women. There were compromises. No organisation replied to my letters offering IT services when I signed them Stephanie, so I used the name Steve, and the difference was remarkable. There was no expectation of women in professions, and when I arrived for a meeting there was a double-take. It made me memorable when I bid for a job. She endured appalling harassment. I remember one occasion in the Seventies when I was trying to sell a multi-million-pound IT contract to a Tory minister of state, who I won't name, and he pinched my bottom while I was talking. I got the job. After that, I always dressed like an honorary man in a grey suit and white blouse. She and Derek married in December 1959, and their son Giles was born four years later. At the age of two, her sweet baby turned into a wild, unmanageable toddler and within a week lost his ability to speak. He never talked again. Months later she received the "bombshell news" that he was severely autistic. "Everything we learnt about his condition was like a skewer in our hearts," she says. There were no places for children like Giles. We decided not to have another child and my husband and I worked in shifts. Derek's career went down the tubes but he never complained. When you have an autistic child, their needs drive everything else. Giles's moods were extreme and he could be violent. We were in a perpetual state of high alert. The only time I forgot about him was when I was engrossed in my work. Some months were so black I felt we were living in a horror film. On more than one occasion, I felt the three of us should commit suicide. We did not because Giles couldn't give his consent. I was smoking 60 cigarettes a day, and it put such pressure on our marriage that we separated for some months. Now we are fine, I am pleased to say. All this led to a breakdown. She was admitted to hospital for several weeks, and Giles, then 12, was placed in an institution. He never lived at home again, and died on October 17, 1998 from a fit that was a consequence of his autism. "His brain has been donated for research to a brain bank at Oxford University, that I funded," she adds proudly. I will never recover from his loss, but I have learnt to live without him and his need of me. Dame Stephanie shows no sign of slowing down. I travel the world to talk about the need for philanthropy: I only have one tenth of my previous wealth. Does she still feel like a refugee? I came close to annihilation, and deep down my refugee status remains important to me. It taught me that few things in life are as solid as they seem, and that wholesale change, though often terrifying, is not necessarily synonymous with catastrophe. I have done more in the seven decades since that miserable day when I arrived than I would ever have believed possible. I know that I am a survivor. Let It Go: The Entrepreneur Turned Ardent Philanthropist" by Dame Stephanie Shirley and Richard Askwith (Andrews UK, £8.99)