You are our ocean, wild or pacific.
Our sky, rain or blue.
Our wind, lilting breeze or storm.
Our stars, glittering galaxy or lamps in the darkness.
Our earth, rugged or moist with love.
Rwyt ti yma
o hyd.
“Jibono Moroner Shimana Charaye”,
We live in your embrace.
Daniel and Jayanta Mitra, 2021
was born in Wrexham, North Wales in September 1943. Her mother, Daisy, was a Londoner. Her father, Iorwerth, commonly known as Ted, was the son of a large Welsh speaking family in Rhosllanerchrugog. Her elder sister is Margaret, a journalist who lives in London.
At the age of 11, Gill won a place at Grove Park Girls’ Grammar School, Wrexham. From early childhood she had shown a talent for music and became very involved in the musical life of the school. She sang in the school choir and the traditional eight voice group that competed in, and often won, competitions at Eisteddfodau (music festivals) throughout North Wales. Her other natural love was languages, especially English and Welsh. She remained bilingual throughout her life. She was also a keen netball player.
On leaving school, Gill worked with the Coal Board, but she had often thought of being a teacher and in her early twenties, she began training as a teacher at Totley Hall College of Education, University of Sheffield, the site of a utopian scheme funded by art critic and social reformer John Ruskin.
Her first teaching post was on Tyneside where she became friends with members of the then widely popular folk pop group, Lindisfarne, joining them in many of their gigs. When they moved to London, Gill moved too. She found a job as a supply teacher at West Green School, Haringey, and her facility with the English language and literature and her considerable ability to play the piano and sing was there for all to see, hear and admire. She was soon on the permanent staff, responsible for English, drama and music throughout the school. Though most of her adult life was spent in England, Gill identified strongly with her Welsh heritage.
Gill eventually became West Green’s Deputy head. Her next step was an MA course and a postgraduate research fellowship at London University’s Institute of Education (now part of UCL) before becoming headteacher of Rhodes Avenue school in Muswell Hill.
Gill believed profoundly in the value of universal, international education and its role in changing lives. She served it uniquely, embedded and engaged as she was in its rich dialectic, discourse and its transformational role in people’s lives.
Gill had a great capacity for friendship and giving and was widely appreciated and much loved wherever she went. Gill lit a torch for 40 years for the United Nations family of hers, a lamp of joy and loving, that will not fade.
If love meant Jayanta and Daniel, then that was unshakeable.
If love meant place, then it was always the wild, wide spaces of Wales and India, the moors and the valleys, the saal forests, rivers and oceans, and high where the spirits rejoice in the Himalayas.
Yellow birds and blue heather in Dee or Clwyd, the eyes carry to the lush waters down Ceiriog to the sound of the Eisteddfod in Llangollen, pink light at daybreak across Kanchenjanga, gold in Amritsar.