COUNTESS Mountbatten of Burma was inducted as an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Ashford and then enthralled members with stories of her long and active life.

She spanned a lifetime of colourful and entertaining snapshots of her time from birth in London to date, pointing out that Ashford Rotary Club was two years older than she.

As a child in London she remembered policemen directing the little traffic and coal carts drawn by horses.

With her sister Pamela she was born into a Naval family. Her father joining the service when he was 12, and later became Admiral of the Fleet until his death, and much of her childhood was spent abroad following the fleet.

She was educated in local schools wherever the family was living and some of the locations were less than luxurious, but she admitted she was a mischievous young lady who had fun wherever she was.

In 1936 she returned to England but war was threatening and during the conflict she recalled child evacuees joining them and going to the cellars during air raid warnings.

Her mother worked in London with St. John Ambulance but because her grandfather was Jewish it was decided that they should be evacuated to America along with other 'at risk’ families.

At 18 she returned to England to join the WRENS for three years where she worked her way up from the canteen assistant to packing wool in a factory. Then, as the equivalent of a Private in the army she worked on signals where she took a commission working on ciphers before moving to Portland Bill and then transferring to Chatham, for her first visit to Kent.

D-DAY was spent in Southampton where, unbeknown to her, on one of the ships was her husband-to-be.

Ceylon was her next home where she met her husband, then ADC to her father, finally returning to England where she got engaged in a bathroom, all perfectly respectable of course.

She was married to John Brabourne in 1946 for 59 years and they had seven children.

She spoke of the loss of her father, son and mother-in-law in the IRA bombing but also of her six remaining children and eighteen grandchildren.