Stephanie Shirley at 91: ‘I think I've got a couple more big trips left in me'

Times

2 days ago

Dame Stephanie Shirley, 91, is a tech pioneer and philanthropist who came to Britain on the Kindertransport in 1939. She built a £3 billion business, Freelance Programmers (later renamed F International), and 70 of her staff became millionaires due to its shared ownership structure. Since retiring in 1993 she has donated more than £70 million to charity. She was made a dame in 2000 and became one of the prestigious few members of the Order of Companions of Honour in 2017.
I suppose the most significant trip I've ever taken was the two-and-a-half day rail and boat journey on the Kindertransport. In 1939, my older sister, Renate, and I travelled from Vienna to London alongside a thousand other tearful Jewish children, with our train tickets around our necks. My German Jewish father lost his job as a judge after Hitler took power, so we moved from Dortmund to Austria but had to get out fast after the Anschluss [the Nazi takeover of Austria]. So that trip to England, my first real travel experience, made a huge difference to my life.
On arrival in England I was fostered by a wonderful couple in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, Guy and Ruby Smith, whom I called Uncle and Auntie. I spent the next few years with them. Yes, it was wartime, but we had a lovely bucket-and-spade-holiday in Blackpool when I was aged six.
Some of my happiest holiday memories are of going camping in a punt on the Upper Thames with my late husband, Derek [who died in 2021, aged 97], during our courting days. We'd hire it for the weekend and use a great big pole to go down the Thames, stopping off along the route in places such as Maidenhead and Marlow. Each night we would pull up a canvas structure to give us privacy, sleeping with blankets over us in the punt. But we were so close to the water that I'd often wake up to see a water rat squinting at me.
After marrying in 1959 we honeymooned at a rather swanky hotel, Great Fosters in Egham, Surrey, staying in a room with a four-poster bed. But we had to check out earlier than we'd planned to because we were short of money.
Following the birth of our only son, Giles, we had a wonderful summer holiday in Tenby, in Wales, when he was little. But he was profoundly disabled and that made travelling with him difficult from the age of two or three [Giles died aged 35]. A day out was a major achievement — and the one holiday Derek and I took without him, a cruise around the Canary Islands, was a disaster because he was so upset at being left in the hands of carers. We never did that again.
As my business grew bigger and more successful in the 1970s and 1980s and we opened subsidiaries overseas, I began to go on work trips to places like Amsterdam (such a beautiful city), and Lucerne in Switzerland, as well as further afield. Given Giles's health issues, and the fact that Derek was not a particularly keen overseas traveller, I started tacking mini-holidays on to those work trips.
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At one point in the 1980s I was travelling to San Francisco four times a year for board meetings, though I'd fly out a day or two early so I could visit an art gallery and dine out. I had a favourite business class seat on the plane, as well as a favourite room — 215, a corner room with windows on two sides — at the Marriott on Union Square, which became a home from home.
The holidays that were most memorable were the most unexpected. For instance, walking around the awe-inspiring Uluru in central Australia, snorkelling off the Great Barrier Reef (tourism was much less developed there when I first visited) and going on a safari in Zimbabwe. Those experiences were just so different to my everyday life.
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Have I been back to Germany and Austria? Being a judge and a German-speaker, my father — by then in the US Army — was called upon to assist the Allied authorities at the Nuremberg trials. So I visited him there in 1946, and got to see a few of the Nazi defendants in the dock, though it wasn't exactly a holiday. Both my birth parents thankfully survived the Second World War but I never really bonded with them again, so I stayed in England.
I've also since returned to Vienna a couple of times, on work and leisure trips, and on one trip saw my old childhood home. It's quite a romantic city, particularly if you love classical music as I do (there's often music in the air), though I obviously felt mixed emotions my first time back there.
Over the past half-dozen years I've used a buggy service to cover long distances in airports, and been joined by my long-time personal assistant, Lynn, a wonderful companion, on my travels. We've visited everywhere. In Edinburgh's airport departure lounge I got talking to the comedian Eddie Izzard, who was wearing a dress, on our return flight to Heathrow. He was great fun and we struck up quite a rapport.
When I was younger, and even during middle age, I was never really conscious of getting jet lag, but it creeps up on you as you get older. These days I need to remember my medications when I travel too. I think I've got a couple more big trips left in me, however, and would love to revisit Japan because the only part I've seen is Tokyo. Just so long as I have a companion to keep me company.
Let It Go by Dame Stephanie Shirley & Richard Askwith (Penguin £10.99). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
In our weekly My Hols interview, famous faces — from the worlds of film, sport, politics, and more — share their travel stories from childhood to the present day. Read more My Hols interviews here.