Gillian Braithwaite

Dear Rodric,
I have just discovered that Jill has away. What a wonderful rich and exciting life she shared with you and the children. All of you must be so proud of her achievements.
Many times I have attempted to locate an address for you and make contact. I lost contact with Nick when I moved from Brisbane.
I remember so vividly the timesI spent with you and Jill in Moscow, and lok back over those years with a sense of wonder!
I am now living in Central Queensland in Rockhampton, the heart of Australias Beef country!

Jill was such a vibrant person and I know how deep your love was for each other.
Please accept my condolences,
Kind regards
Adrienne (Adin) Jackson nee Dunn

Dear Rodric,
I worked in the Visa Section, Warsaw, from 1960 until I got married to Don McCreary in September of 1961. He was with CARE. I remember you & Gillian of course and I was so sorry to learn of her death. I was quite bowled over when I heard her speaking Polish to Jean in the in the "Pink" - remember those days? After living in Yugoslavia for several years, and then in McLean, Virginia, Don & I now live on Nantucket Island where he is retired & I work for the Nantucket Conservation Foundation.
Again, my best wishes to you and your family. Gillian was a wonderful person. Jane Pearce McCreary

From Katya Chumakova

Dear Rodric!
     Now that it is a year that Jill is no longer with us, I wanted to tell you how much she meant to us and how much we miss her.
     Jill was so vivid, compassionate and intelligent! It was always a great pleasure to meet and talk to Jill. She was interested in our joys and problems and was eager to discuss them.
Her interest in Russia and the Russian people was very deep and sincere. It came from her heart and was much broader than a duty.
Jill was always ready to help those who needed help. I know hat she spent a lot of time and effort helping very different people.
     Jill was the best friend of my mother, Marina, for the last decade or more of my mother's life.
     They passed away so close one after another: my mother on March 8, 2008, and Jill on Nov 10, 2008...
     One of my mother's last phone calls was to Jill. It was in the end of February, 08. My mother had come to Los Angeles in the middle of February. She was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer. There was some subtle hope that American medicine could help her. However, her condition became worse very rapidly. She had pain and was very weak. One of those days she asked me to find and dial your number and spoke to Jill for the last time. 10 days later she passed away.
     They were both extraordinary women - Jill and my mother. Very willful, very strong, very energetic, determined to do good deeds and successful in completing them.
     I know that Jill worked a lot trying to organize help to children in orphanage homes in Russia. That was where they became friends. My mother admired Jill. Jill's energy and determination inspired her. She worked together with Jill and they fought desperately against many bureaucratic problems on their way.
      My mother remembered those years later as very fulfilling years of her life.
     She really loved Jill and greatly respected her. I recall how joyful my mother always was when Jill called her by phone from England.
       They  were very close friends indeed.
        Once ( maybe 10 years ago ) Jill told me that she was happy to meet Marina, and that she had never met such an open hearted and open minded person as Marina among Soviet or post-Soviet Russian ladies before. She told me that my mother was an extraordinary woman.
       I think that Jill was a very extraordinary lady herself. She was a bridge between two different cultures. We are grateful for the Grace she embodied.
        Everybody in our family who met Jill will remember her as a very bright and beautiful person, a real gentlewoman, the best and last friend of our beloved mother and grandmother, Marina Chudakova.
        Please be assured of our deep love and compassion. Please remember that you and your family have a big family of Russian friends, both in Moscow and in Los Angeles.

Sincerely yours,

Katya Chumakova.

Letter from David Wright, former Chairman of the Russian European Trust

Rodric

I am so shocked and sorry to hear that Gill has died. Although I was aware that she had been ill I had no idea how seriously ill she had become.

... Nothing anyone can say to you will ease the pain. While we are blessed with a rich language, we do not have words enough to help at times like this.

I cannot however let the moment pass without making some comment on the contribution that Gill made in her life. Of course I have known her only in the context of the Russian European Trust and it is on this that I feel able to say a few words.

I know that in her love for Russia and Russian people and Gill’s compassion she has touched the lives of thousands in ways we do not necessarily understand.

By opening her mind to the contribution that Antonina and Tony might make to assisting with the welfare reform in the CIS,, and in driving the establishment of RET she laid the foundation for profound change. Whose changes have had a fundamental positive impact on the lives of thousands of vulnerable Russian people as gradually they were able to get access to the new services.

The list is long but I thin there are outstanding contributions as a result of RET. The development of occupational therapy services, the new day centres for older people and of course the management of the after effects of civil and military emergencies. There have been many more.

These projects have all happened because Gill was steadfast in her belief in what we were trying to do and her overwhelming desire to ensure that we were there to support the Russian effort, not to take it over or direct it.
In these modest beginnings we can see the root of robust social services that will endure, and in so doing service thousands if not millions over time.

This is not grandiose thinking but comes from an understanding of [how] such developments grow. The lives of people will be so much better because of the new services.
So if a life is to be measured by the difference made, Gill has had an exemplary one. To have the vision, to facilitate the organisation and to help sustain it, often through some very difficult times, requires someone very special. Gill was indeed very special.

We on the Board of the Trust loved her dearly, and have great respect for her. But above all we have been enriched so much by knowing her.
...

David and Sue

Financial Times, 24/25 January 2009

Obituary by Quentin Peel

Ambassadors’ wives are not supposed to get too passionate or partisan about the countries in which their husbands serve. If a revolution breaks out, they are supposed to keep their heads down, maintain the morale of the staff and make sure the flag is still flying.
Jill Braithwaite, who died in November, was not that sort of ambassador’s wife. On August 20 1991, when the streets of Moscow were in chaos after a KGB-led coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, she was on the barricades around the White House, where Boris Yeltsin was refusing to surrender. With Russian friends who lived nearby, she served bread and soup to chilly demonstrators.
It was a typical act of commitment from a woman who was always engaged beyond the call of duty. If the coup had succeeded, there is little doubt that she and her husband, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, would have been on the next plane out of Russia. But it failed and she was able to carry on building a network of social projects and aid programmes, many of which still exist today.
Ambassadors’ wives are not supposed to be enthusiastic about alternative careers, either. But Jill was. Halfway through her life, after being first a diplomat herself and then a wife and mother (the Foreign Office insisted on her giving up her job), she embarked on a new career as an archaeologist, culminating in the publication, almost 20 years later, of a seminal study of Roman face pots – Faces of the Past.
It was a subject that no one had previously thought to study, according to Richard Reece, who was a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology at London University when she started as a mature student in 1979. She was inspired to pursue it when she returned one day from lunch to one of his lectures and “woke up from a short nap to be confronted by an enormous grotesque face leering at her”, he recalls.
It was a classic Roman face pot but he was unable to explain much about it and she was intrigued. There was no literature on the subject because face pots – simple pottery decorated with all sorts of weird and wonderful faces – were scattered in small numbers across the ancient Roman empire, from the Black Sea to Spain and from southern Italy to Scotland. “The evidence was so disjointed,” says Mr Reece. “A given site might have been dug for 10 years, but only two or three pieces found that might have been part of a face pot.”
Jill set about putting that right. She first published an undergraduate dissertation on British face pots, which appeared in Britannia, the journal of Roman Britain, and then embarked on a PhD covering face pots throughout Europe. It took her more than 15 years, with time out to be ambassador’s wife in Moscow.
“It was partly a declaration of independence,” says Rodric. “But she was fascinated by it, and very meticulous as a scholar.”
She travelled all over Europe seeking specimens along the old Roman frontiers from Germany to Romania and Yugoslavia, as well as Italy. Her love of languages – she had joined the British Foreign Office in 1959, having studied French, Italian and Spanish at London University, and later learned Russian and Polish – was a great help.
Nobody really knows what the face pots were for, but Jill managed to trace their random discovery to the movement of Roman legions, spotting similar styles in eyebrows or lolling tongues. Because they often turn up as whole pots, Jill concluded they were used as burial urns. They were low-life products, not great art.
When Jill accompanied her husband back to Moscow in 1988, just as the Gorbachev revolution was gathering pace, when I was FT correspondent there, she had to put archaeology to one side. The transformation of the Soviet Union left no time or emotional energy for academic work. They were a remarkable ambassadorial couple at a crucial moment: both excellent Russian speakers, they built up a wide circle of contacts in Moscow and outside. “Her diary was much darker when she was there,” says Sir Rodric. “She was almost overwhelmed by events, and by the poverty she saw around her.”
At one moment in 1990, the ambassador’s sitting room became a store room for more than 100 wheelchairs, sent from British hospitals to be used in the impoverished Russian health sector. She became involved in supporting a children’s home at Dmitrov and another project at Tolga, where Russian nuns were refurbishing a ruined monastery as a convent. She used to drive out to help them at weekends. She had a British middle-class Church of England background, but she related to the emotional importance of the Russian Orthodox Church in national life.
“She found the faith and the music very moving, even though she knew that many of the priests hqd compromised with the regime,” says Rodric.
One of her main projects was to improve the care of mentally and physically disabled mentally and physically disabled children in cities of the Volga region; another to care for the elderly in Siberia. Such social services were almost entirely lacking under the Soviet system. Her social work took her to places like Kemerovo, coal-mine capital capital of western Siberia, where she worked with middle-aged Communist women: “She liked these people. They got things done,” says Rodric. “But she found it very harrowing.”
Jill?was also?someone?who?�ggot things done�h. She was charming and organised and incredibly hard-working. Her enthusiasm often exceeded her stamina.
She finally published her PhD on face pots after she came home in 1993. It was the core, with a lot of extra material and illustrations of hundreds of fascinating faces, of the book she published in 2007. But it was too late for any reviews to appear before she died. No one else knows enough about the subject to provide a thorough peer review. She was ahead of her time.
Gillian Mary Robinson was born in London on September 15 1937. She is survived by her husband, two sons and one daughter. One twin son, Mark, died as a child.

Very moving and interesting obituary in the Financial Times. I believe I worked with her daughter Kate at the Moscow Tribune in the early 90s, and I met her son Richard briefly in Bosnia I believe. Anyway I wanted to extend my condolences to the family.

Jill was part of a group of young diplomats in Warsaw in the early 1960s that included Rodric, other British, American and European colleagues one of them me (Swedish). I think it was her first post as it was for me. Times in Warsaw at that time were not easy, for the Poles or for us, but we immersed ourselves in work, culture and social life and had a great time. Jill was very charming and full of life and energy. In our little group Rodric who was slightly our senior soon emerged as the favorite boyfriend. Next time we met in Washington DC with similar jobs again we could enjoy our respective families. Thank you for the great photos that brought back many dear memories. I was so sad to learn about her death.

They are a lovely selection of photos, Rodric

I was in shock with the very sad news. To many years ago I was helping her to look after her first child Richard. She wanted to look after both Richard and Kate -the new comer, but they were so small she needed my help. How young we all were. Now, after so many years passed and having the sad news, all the good old memories came back and I have difficulties to fade them. I saw her the last time in 1987, she still was full of life and very warm, as I knew her. That is how I will always remember her.

We first met Jill Braithwaite at the reception for Rodric’s book at the British Embassy in Washington in 2006. She looked so regal but felt so warm and loving – welcoming all the guests to the Embassy in such a way that every single person felt her personal attention. We never saw her at the Embassy in Moscow, but we could so clearly imagine her – in the most challenging and promising times of change in Moscow, she was Rodric’s inspiration and support and a welcoming presence for so many Russian friends whom they made during their stay in Moscow. And then, in 2007, Jill walked with us on the shores of the Black Sea and gave us the most precious gift. Before Jill, we did not understand that a single human being could combine the most piercing intelligence and infinite personal warmth. These are contradictions, for the rest of us. But for Jill, her beautiful eyes considered the person in front of her, and the people around her, and she turned each of these potentially fraught situations into celebrations. On that one particular week, in the midst of a summer school for Russian university faculty, it was Jill who organized the wine reconnaissance patrol that came back with plastic bags of banging bottles; she found the openers when others were reduced to the threat of using their teeth; she encouraged and more than that, cheered, the ballads and the lamentations and even the arias from our operatic talents, some more limited than others; she maitre d’d and shepherded and brought out the best in every person crowded into that little room, her room, her diplomatic reception, her salon – all of which she built with Rodric, ambassador to the world, archetype, would that all ambassadors rise to Rodric’s level of empathy and insight, but then, no other ambassador lived with Jill. Her magic consisted of grace, in proportions that we can only aspire to, in every situation, from the pebbles of the beach, to the organization of chorales from Afghan veterans, to the reception of heads of state, to the care of each of us. Jill’s knowledge of and appreciation for Russian culture and language was unique and unforgettable for any Russian who met her. And it is so incredibly touching that she chose for her friends and family to celebrate her pominki on December 20, the 40th day – the Russian way of saying the last goodbyes to the one who left us. She was a true ambassador too – with her big heart and love for the country that became her temporary home. Countless Russian friends and people she touched even briefly will miss her. From knowing Jill, we are richer than any oligarch. We wish we were there, at the pominki table on the day with Rodric and you all, but we are here, and we have Jill in our mind’s eye and in our hearts. Thank you, Jill, for sharing your heart with us.

Tom Blanton and Svetlana Savranskaya
National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington D.C.

I was fortunate to be a bridesmaid at Jill and Rodric's wedding. Jill was quite simply, a perfect role model, brimful of fun and wisdom. She will be missed by many people.

Please kindly insert the following page - and photo ? - in Guest Book for Gillian Braithwaite.Thank you.

My friend Jill. When I first met Jill we were 14 and schoolgirls at Roedean, I was impressed by her dark sparkling eyes and curly black hair, neatly tight. This was my first impression. Getting to know Jill better during these studious years at school, I soon realized that she was a treasure of determination, intelligence, combined with a high sense of humour. In a word, a joyful and relyable personality. Knowing that I was far from my country, Switzerland, Jill invited me to stay with her family. Her parents, taking us out on Sundays have contributed to make my school-life very happy in England.
We kept contact afterwards and her letters -some of them I still have - were a real link between us. Upon their numerous journeys where Rodric was posted, we had some wonderful occasions to see our two families and the children meeting in England and Switzerland.
My friend Jill has left us, I am in deep sorrow. Adèle Pusztaszeri

Jill was my godmother with a truly wonderful engaging personality. She had time to listen, to show understanding and care for others.
My wife Alison and I will miss her greatly.

Jill and the Russian European Trust for Welfare Reform
I first met Jill in September 1992, when I was trying to raise funds for a social welfare project in Russia. She wrote a very encouraging letter: without it I might well have given up. Thereafter I and my future wife Antonina met Jill on several occasions, and early in 1993, she agreed to be involved in setting up RET. June 1993 the first meeting of the Trust was held at her home at 79 Hampstead Way in June 1993. Jill did not want to be chair of the new organisation, but agreed to be Vice-Chair. She also persuaded Adrian Longley to be our Honorary Legal Adviser, and successfully approached Lord Howe to be Vice –President.
Jill was very involved with most of our 20 medium and large projects but I think that her key achievements were with our two major projects.
From January 1997 to 2001 Jill was the Project Director for a €2.5 million European Union (TACIS) project to help develop social services systems in Russia. The project was run by RET in consortium with the British Council and the French Social Insurance Company Mutualite Sociale Agricole, and in collaboration with the Russian Ministry of Labour and Social Development in Moscow and with the Regional Governments in two pilot regions of Samara and Penza. It was an extremely difficult project to implement and manage and Jill paid an absolutely key role in ensuring its success.
From 2000-2003 Jill was Project Director for a major three year project funded by DFID (Department for International Development) to support the development of services for the elderly in the Kemerovo Region of Siberia, in partnership with the Regional Government. In her role as Project Director Jill visited Kemerovo on three occasions and was also involved in the three UK study visits that were part of the project. The project was again highly successful and Jill, Antonina and I were awarded the Governor’s special medal for our achievements. We also received Federal Awards from the Ministry of Labour and Social Development during RET’s 10th Anniversary Celebrations in 2003.
There is absolutely no question that without Jill’s great love for Russia and its people and her wholehearted commitment to RET we would not have been celebrating our 15th Anniversary this year. We can best sum up the legacy of Jill’s input into RET by the overwhelming number of messages we received from the Russian people that she had met and touched during her time with us.
Jill was unquestionably one of the most caring compassionate people I have ever known and I feel very honoured that I had the privilege to have her support and respect for more than 15 years.

I am hugely saddened to hear of Jill's recent death. I was one of a small number of British music students at the Moscow Conservatoire during the eighties and lucky enough to be there during her time with Rodric at the Embassy. Life in Moscow was challenging then and I have many memories of her kindness and generosity of spirit during that time. She seemed to be so very busy and involved in almost every aspect of Moscow life and I remember being quietly amazed that she would take trouble to seek us out if she had not heard from us for a while. She would invite us to lunch, gently drag Rodric out of his study and open his viola case and make him play some chamber music with us. I think these were precious and memorable moments for all of us in so many different ways.
In those days Christmas Day was a normal working day in Russia and Jill would make it absolutely clear that there was no question of us having Christmas lunch anywhere but with them and the family at the Embassy. We always had a fabulous time and her warmth and care for everybody was always extraordinary.
Back in the UK she continued to keep in touch and follow our careers, and I have been thrilled that she and Rodric have supported some of my concerts in London.
Moscow was and always will be a very special place for me and Jill made it extra special. My sincerest condolences to Rodric and the family.

We met Jill and Rodric in Moscow in the turbulent years of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Rodric was
without question one of the best informed and most influential Ambassadors at these crucial
times and Jill had no small part in the success of his mission. She was always at the places
where it happened (like during the putsch!), saying the things that mattered and knowing the
people who counted. She was equally at ease in the Russian language, culture and society.
One of the personal highlights of our stay in Moscow, a memory we cherish, was their moving
farewell party at the Residence when a well known Russian theatre company performed
Chekhov's "The Lady with the small dog" for the guests. This was Jill all over: knowing how
to please her friends and honour our Russian hosts.
We had the pleasure and great fortune of meeting them again when we were later posted to
London. There, they remained the warm, hospitable and knowledgeable friends we had enjoyed in
Moscow, introducing us to many of the numerous cultural, social and indeed political activities of the British capital. In these, Jill was every bit as present and proactive as Rodric. They have both been marvellous and attentionate companions in the many years we spent in the same cities - and beyond.
Jill's charm was natural, spontaneous and compelling. Her energy and drive were awesome.
We had been very sad to hear of her illness and hoped her strength and willpower would help her overcome this challenge, as it had many others. Our heartfelt sympathy goes to Rodric and to their children.

Thierry and Françoise de Gruben

I only just heard this very sad news. Mrs Braithwaite stepped in to an extremely difficult situation on my behalf many years ago in Russia and her kindness significantly changed my life. I very much regret that we never had the opportunity to meet her to thank her personally though I know she was aware subsequently of our gratitude. All our heartfelt condolences to Mrs Braithwaite's family.

Some 30 years ago, a small group of Americans and a British friend from the Embassy in Washington, D. C. decided to meet regularly to share a common interest in English history. Over the years, the British participation changed as assignments took our friends to new posts. In l983, our great good fortune was to welcome Jill and Rodric into the group, their debut being an illuminating talk by Jill on Hadrian’s Wall. The bonds of friendship forged in these mostly monthly meetings have extended into frequent visits across the water, and a tradition of reunions with past members every few years. The most recent was in September of 2007, a two week stay in Russia organized by Jill and Rodric that was both scholarly and great good fun. They opened wonderful intellectual and cultural windows for us into the country to which they were so attached. It will always be a treasured memory of a happy time with Jill.

Jill was a friend beyond compare: a rare combination of gentle manner and tough fiber. Always rewarding to talk to, she was curious and wise about so many subjects, from family life to the fascinations of history. She was generous to her friends, and tolerant, always giving thoughtful attention and response. I am posting a picture of her happily exploring stone ruins, as she loved to do, at a reunion on Gozo and Malta in 2006. She will be greatly missed by all of us.

Rodric was my Ambassador during my first posting to Moscow during the Gorbachev period, and he and Jill were and always will be role models for me - it was one of the privileges of my life to share that time with them. We've seen each other all too rarely in recent years, but I treasure the memory that people whom I admired so much were also friends, and colleagues who were so outstanding in everything they did professionally stood out most of all for their humanity.

I met Jill and Rodric when they were on their way to their ambassadorial posting in Moscow. We soon became friends and I often went to tea with her at the Embassy when I was in Moscow. Our lives crossed at many points subsequently. She was unfailingly helpful, supportive, interested and generous with her time. Her enthusiasm for her archaeological work and her Russian social projects was infectious. We never ran out of things to talk about! She will be sadly missed.

Jill was a wonderful person. Rodric is an old school friend of mine ; when he married Jill, she became a great friend too. We often spent holidays all together. I found that Jill was not only a warm, intelligent and caring person as wife, mother and friend, but also a splendid ambassador’s wife and hostess ! All this didn’t prevent her from being a brilliant archaeologist. She was also very courageous. This was obvious when Cyrille and I came over to see her last november. I will never forget that moment.

Jane Cahen


She is not with us any more, yet the first word that comes to my mind when I think of her is “life”. She had a spark of life in her that not everybody has. Her rapid fluent talk, her mobility, her quick attention to everything and everybody, her ease in doing things as if it was easy. She was beautiful to look at, she had a warm presence, she was interesting to listen to. I remember, in her kitchen at Hampstead, Jane and I were listening to Jill “lecturing” to us on face pots, the subject of her archaelogical thesis. A lecture ? No, but A fascinating, enthusiastic talk which, starting from this highly specialised subject turned out to be a lively and compelling evocation of the customs and beliefs of the Roman people. On that day she transformed my vision of ancient Rome which, as a French intellectual, I had always considered to be somewhat barbaric compared to Greece. I understood that, as an Englishwoman, she felt an affinity with the strengh, the political efficiency, the tenacity, the resilience of the ancient Romans. On that day, I learned something about Rome and something about Jill. Her life story and the courage she showed in the last period of her life confirm this view.

Cyrille Cahen

My cousin Jill was a wonderful person - my bridesmaid and godmother to our older son. A welcoming hostess wherever in the world they were living and super guest. Her telephone calls to her godson were warm and loving. She will be sadly missed.

Jill (nee Robinson) Robinson had four careers: as a promising diplomat, a wife and mother, a meticulous scholar, and a supporter of social reform in Russia. Born in 1937, she was educated at Roedean and London University..
She joined the Foreign Office in November 1959, served with distinction in the political section of the embassy in Warsaw, but had to resign on marriage to her colleague Rodric Braithwaite. She continued to use her linguistic (Polish, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish), personal and political skills in her new life, and only occasionally regretted the loss of her formal career.
For Jill, marriage and motherhood were in any case the supreme career. She joyously bore and nurtured five children.
She then began a new career in archaeology, which she loved. Her monograph “Faces of the Past” (2007), is a major contribution to the study of Roman pottery.
Jill loved Russia and its people. The same courage which helped her bear the death of a small son in 1971 inspired her to drag her Russian friends onto the barricades defending Yeltsin during the Moscow coup of 1991: imprudent for an ambassador’s wife, but inescapably right for her. Among the most rewarding of her many later Russian commitments was the “Russian European Trust for Welfare Reform” led by the dynamic Antonina Dashkova, which she helped to found in 1993.
Jill was a fountain of love and generosity, of willpower and energy, of tremendous intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm, of modesty and integrity. She was bossy and tempestuous. She had a quiet sense of humour and an infectious laugh. She was the most loyal of friends. She was without malice or cynicism.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not:
And Death shall have no dominion.

Jill was a beacon of light to the many all over the world who knew and admired her as good-natured wife and mother, gifted scholar, diplomatic hostess, and friend. Her death is the cause of deep sorrow.

We would like to express our deepest regret with the departure of Jill. Her lovingkindness, hospitality, and grecefulness will be always remembered. We were strangers in the UK, and she received us. May Christ, who has promised His Kingdom to those who receive strangers, feed the hungry, and help the needy, grant peace to her soul.

I was very saddened to hear of Gillian Braithwaite's death; we will all miss her from our pottery conferences. She was a charming person, interesting to talk to, and keen to support others working on Roman pottery, particularly from eastern Europe. We had a common interest in 'ritual' pottery, and she was generous in sharing and discussing ideas and information. Her book on head and face pots is a fine achievement, and will be of lasting value to those studying Roman pottery and religious customs.

The loss of Gillian Braithwaite is without doubt one of the saddest pieces of news in 2008. She was unquestionably one of the most pleasant personalities in Roman ceramics studies – it always seemed as if we were blessed by her presence. The subject of face pots required a special devotion: most pottery specialists are lucky to see a handful of examples – an ear here, a nose there – but her final publication, published just last year, runs to more than 500 pages, and summarizes more than 25 years of research across the whole of the Roman Empire. It is so sad that she has gone before having the chance to discover how useful her work will have been for generations of future researchers. She will be much missed.

I remember Dr. Gillian Braithwaite as a friendly collegue always looking for face pots. May She rest in Peace!