From wartime service developing camouflage and escape aids as a member of MI9’s “A Force” in Cairo, to being secretary of the World Disarmament Campaign and developing the musical Peace Child, my mother, Eirwen Harbottle, who has died aged 100, packed more into her long life than many could achieve in two.
“Don’t squander your life,” she counselled. “You rarely regret the things you did do, only the things you didn’t.”
The daughter of Helen (nee Hayes) and Hugh Llwellyn-Jones, who was the manager of the Ottoman Bank in Nicosia, Eirwen was born and brought up in Cyprus. After attending Warwick high school in the UK, she returned to Cyprus, but in 1941 was evacuated from there to South Africa. She worked in Cape Town as a recorder for the Government Intelligence Records Bureau, keeping track on names of people who might be consorting with the enemy.
In 1943 she returned to Cyprus and, due to her work in Cape Town, was recruited for A Force in MI9, then transferred to Cairo. Her boss there was Tony Simonds, a lieutenant colonel in MI9; they married the same year.
After living in Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia, in 1946 they settled in Cyprus. Together they started a flower farm in the Kyrenia mountains. Eirwen also helped set up the English programme of the CBS (Cyprus Broadcasting Service) both in radio and then TV, where she was a newsreader.
That marriage ended in divorce in 1969, after Eirwen met Brigadier Michael Harbottle, chief of staff for the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus. They married in 1972 and moved to St John’s Wood, north London. Michael was involved in the peace movement, which was rare for a high-ranking officer, and the couple were friends with the Nobel peace laureates Fenner Brockway and Philip Noel Baker, who set up the World Disarmament Campaign. In 1980 Philip asked them to run it. Michael became the general secretary, and Eirwen secretary for two years.
During this time Eirwen had the idea of creating a children’s musical about peace. She introduced the composer and songwriter David Gordon to the author of The Peace Book, Bernard Benson, and together they created Peace Child. Its premiere was at the Royal Albert Hall, on the final night of Disarmament Week, in October 1981 and it was subsequently performed all over the US and the former Soviet Union. Eirwen was chair of the trustees of the continuing Peace Child organisation until 2009.
In 1982 she and Michael had founded the Centre for International Peacebuilding, which was focused on helping the UN deliver constructive peacemaking and peacekeeping. Eirwen was co-director and never really retired.
Her two priorities were always what role the military could play in building peace, and how young people could make a difference in our world.
Michael died in 1997. Eirwen is survived by her two daughters, Sally-Anne and me, from her first marriage, four grandchildren, Charles, Julian, Alexander and Natasha, and seven great-grandchildren, Fred, Scarlett, Camilla, Freda, Louis, Robin and Amira.
