MARTHA Lane Fox, the founder of travel website lastminute.com, has praised staff at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital for helping her to walk again following a road crash abroad.

In May, 2004, five months after the sale of the website, Ms Lane Fox, then 31, was holidaying with boyfriend Chris Gorrell Barnes in Morocco when their car swerved on a wet patch of road. She was not wearing a seatbelt and was flung from the car.

She landed on a rock, broke her arm and her pelvis in six places, and suffered horrific leg injuries and massive internal bleeding.

Ms Lane Fox spent a year in the John Radcliffe having metal inserts and bone grafts.

"I hope I had the last operation this summer but you never know," she said.

Now on the road to recovery, Ms Lane Fox, daughter of Oxford University classicist Robin Lane Fox, has praised the dedicated nursing care she received from JR staff.

Speaking at the recent Women of the Year lunch, Ms Lane Fox said: "They made all the difference. In the early days, when I couldn't move at all, one nurse used to do my hair in ridiculous hairstyles, which made me feel human.

"And when I was in the rehab ward, the nurse who ran it was wonderful - she knew exactly what stage I should be at and asked me every day how I was doing."

Ms Lane Fox pledged to ensure the two nurses were invited to the Women of the Year lunch next year, saying she believed nurses were the "lifeblood" of the NHS.

The dotcom millionaire still walks with a stick, and as a result, does a lot of her shopping on the Internet.

"I buy everything on the Internet now - all my pharmaceuticals, clothes from Topshop and Selfridges, and groceries," she said.

"I'm like an experiment to see if someone can rely on the Internet for everything."

Ms Lane Fox still needs to do more than an hour of exercises to build up her wasted muscles, but no longer needs nursing care at her home.

She shot to fame after she and business partner Brent Hoberman took lastminute.com from start-up to a peak value of £733m.