Gillian Joynson-Hicks, Vicountess Brentford, has died age 81. Lady Brentford had deep evangelical Christian beliefs, a ‘steely determination’ to advance them, and held several influential positions to this end.
Born in Kenya in 1942, Gillian was educated at West Heath Girls’ School in Kent. During her childhood, she suffered from rickets, which, according to The Telegraph, gave her ‘a lifelong fellow-feeling for those who were struggling.’ After training as a chartered accountant, she married the then Hon. Crispin Joynson-Hicks in 1964, bringing up three daughters and a son in Sussex.
In 1998, Lady Brentford became President of the Church Mission Society and held the position until 2007 – she was also chosen by George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, to become the Third Estates Commissioner in 1999 (the first woman to hold the position). Indeed, The Telegraph reported that to many observers she seemed to have ‘unfettered access to the Archbishop’s ear’.
