Anne Dreydel, co-founder of St Clare's, Oxford, is a renowned educationalist and has been a leading champion of international relations for over 60 years.

To those of us lucky enough to have also had our lives personally touched by her hand, she is an inspirational figure.

Anne Dreydel's young life radically changed course at the age of 22, when a German bomber, being chased home by a British Spitfire after an air raid on London, jettisoned a bomb on her house. The bomb killed her step-father and fractured Anne's spine.

"My sister was actually sleeping beside me in the next bed. But it was all or nothing in air raids, you were either killed or very badly injured, or you were all right. You didn't just get a broken arm.

"I was in hospital for 15 months and it was only really when I came out of hospital that I thought well, if I can't walk, I'd better learn something'. What I'd expected to do, which was to marry and to have four children, probably wasn't going to happen, I must have an alternative. I would never have gone to university if I hadn't had my spine fractured in an air raid in the war."

Oxford University eventually led to a life devoted to improving international understanding, but Anne had been a passionate Europhile, even before the war.

In 1938, she spent four months living with a German family and perfecting her German.

"They were preparing for war. The family I was staying with told me that nothing said inside the house was to be repeated outside. You never knew who you might be talking to. I still keep up with the family, and the daughter of the family came to St Clare's to do a summer course."

Having survived her injuries against the odds, Anne applied to St Anne's College, Oxford, to study history. She was accepted, having been interviewed in the waiting room of St Thomas's Hospital by the principal, and went up to Oxford in 1943.

After her prelims, she converted to English literature at the end of her first year. This, along with continued illness, meant she spent four years in all at the university.

"I was ill a great deal, and in and out of hospital. I didn't get my strength back for a long time. But I had an absolutely wonderful mother. She was redoubtable. She simply gave me the support I needed."

After two years, the war ended and her generation came back to Oxford.

"We were thankful to be alive and were concerned and full of energy. All the university societies had died during the war, but they were all waiting to be revived. We were always starting endless societies. It was a wonderful time to be here. We were very conscious of relations with other countries, but particularly with Germany."

Germany had been laid to waste. Conditions were dreadful, especially through the bitterly cold winter of 1947.

Frank Pakenham, (later to be Lord Longford, and a governor of St Clare's), was Cabinet Minister in charge of British Zone in Germany. The Euro-minded students asked for his help.

He used his influence with the Foreign Office, and supported the beginning of a twinning arrangement with Bonn University. This ultimately led to the twinning of the two cities which continues today.

A group called Christian Action paid the cost of bringing students to Oxford. They came for three weeks, not just from Bonn, but also from Austrian, Scandinavian, Dutch, Belgian and French universities.

"We discussed the things we agreed, and disagreed about. We got politicans, journalists, dons to come and talk to us. We had never been able to meet each other, except as allies or enemies. There was a great feeling of wanting to remake the world, of idealism.

"The most important thing, especially in modern times, was that we reached across religions. Of course in those days, the Anglicans and the Roman Catholics never talked to each other, but we did."

They not only talked to each other, they set up a route of cultural exchange between Oxford and a number of European educational institutions. It was this exchange that highlighted a lack in what could be offered to foreign students. At that time there was no facility through which they could come to live and learn for longer than the three-week visit.

In 1953, Anne and her colleague, Pamela Morris, started the Oxford English Centre for Foreign Students, later re-named St Clare's Hall. It is an oft-repeated St Clare's story, that the whole institution was started with £5 (two pounds ten shillings each donated by the two founders) which was spent on stamps. A leaflet was distributed to British Council offices, schools and universities throughout Western Europe, and students began to arrive.

If one had to pick one memorable phrase from the life of Anne Dreydel, it would be: "There's no point in speaking four languages if you have nothing interesting to say in any of them."

So as well as learning the language, students would be taught about British culture, literature, political institutions and history.

The foreign students were soon joined by British girls. In the 1950's, the education of daughters tended to peter out after the age of 16. The number of university places available to girls was so pitiful that even the enthusiastic intellectual would find it hard to find a place to study.

St Clare's offered A-levels and even the London University External Degree, if parents should be so liberal as to educate their girls beyond 18.

Anne stayed as sole principal of St Clare's until 1983, after Pamela Morris's retirement, overseeing the introduction of the International Baccalaureate to replace A-Levels.

In 1983, she followed her love for Italy to become the principal of the American School in Florence for a short while. This has been followed by continuing work in education as an advisor, school governor and a deep involvement in improving literacy in schools.

Now in her eighties, living in the north Oxford house she has lived in for decades, Anne is as sharp as ever, her phenomenal memory retrieving facts about students from decades before. Nothing gets past this extraordinary woman.

On an international level, Anne has improved understanding beyond measure.

As a head mistress, she has personally touched thousands of lives, always looking for the best in even the most unlikely candidate, and demanding it, but always with a twinkle in her eye that conveyed the sheer pleasure of being alive.

The Story So Far History of St Clare's 1953-2003, by Philippa Boston, is available through www.stclares.ac.uk