Elizabeth Mann

Liz was born in London in 1920 to Thomas Howells Mann and his wife Edith Sara (nee Fuller). Tom was a civil engineer and had been brought up in Bedford having moved from London for his and his brother's education and his father's poor health. Interestingly his daughter's education was not really considered and his father's poor health can't have been that bad as he made to 85 years old.

 

After a working for a few years in London they moved back to Bedford with two children, Liz and John and from there out to Burgos in Spain for 6 years whilst he worked on the construction of a trans-Spanish railway. So Liz spent some very formative years in northern Spain with a spanish nanny and could speak the language very well by the time she left aged about ten. She was teased back in school in Bedford about being "spanish" and lost it through embarrassment and lack of practice.

 

A love of theatre had developed from somewhere probably playing alone or with her little brother in Burgos and that wish culminated in her getting a place at RADA from 1938 -40. There were 165 acting graduates that year.

 

She made a propaganda film in 1942 The Day Will Dawn with Deborah Kerr. She joined the WRAF and worked in the meteorological units through the rest of the war and post war went into repertory theatre where she met Jack. As their family grew her acting commitments lessened and by the time Sarah and I came along in 1956 and 60 she had retired from the stage and screen.

 

She died in 1980 aged only 59 and a mere 19 months after Jack.

 

I added this page on the 45th anniversary of her death