Madeleine Bedford – former President of ALL
Members will be saddened to learn of the recent death of Madeleine Bedford after a lengthy illness.
Madeleine was also an active member of NALA and for a long time the Languages Adviser in Hampshire, where she worked with Kathy Wicksteed, later also to become ALL President.
Bill Musk, ALL Trustee, recalls her as a clear-thinking, critical friend to the Association at a period of change in the Language world, while my own strongest memory of her is from a talk when she chaired one of her Language World conferences:
- https://www.all-languages.org.uk/language_world/language-world-1995/
- https://www.all-languages.org.uk/language_world/language-world-1996/
- https://www.all-languages.org.uk/language_world/language-world-1997/
It was on the theme of ‘De-Junking’ and contained great advice about trying not to let your store cupboard (or your mind) get cluttered up with too much stuff that was not actually useful. The trick as Madeleine describe it, was in knowing what was junk (ephemeral fashion) and what was treasure that you should hang on to, no matter what changed in the environment.
In her retirement Madeleine was able to maintain her love of languages by visiting her children and grandchildren who by then were living all over the world. In an email exchange catching up with each other’s news she wrote to me:
We are in the throes of last- minute preparations to fly to Colombia to spend Christmas and New Year with our younger daughter and her three children. Meanwhile our elder daughter is living in Singapore with her husband and their dog. Their daughter will spending Christmas in Madrid and hopefully her younger brother, who lives in Amsterdam, will be joining them. Her elder brother and his girlfriend, who comes from Gibraltar, are flying out to Singapore.
ALL is grateful for the contributions of all the volunteers who have supported, and continue to support our work – including our Presidents listed on this page https://www.all-languages.org.uk/about/what-is-all/who-we-are-2/
If you know of someone you think should stand as President or for another position, please encourage them to do so. There are annual elections in the Summer term.